Fed Must Act Now Or System Collapses: 'Never Seen Anything Like This' | Danielle DiMartino Booth
Summary
Energy Stocks: Framed as a relative safe harbor due to strong dividends and recent outperformance, though extreme oil prices could eventually slow growth even for majors like Chevron (CVX).
Dividend Stocks: Investors are rotating toward dividend-producing equities for income and stability, moving away from high-growth names (e.g., the prior "Mag 7") amid macro uncertainty.
Precious Metals: After a sharp decline, metals found a floor and saw renewed bids, supported by easing short-end yields and fewer forced liquidations, suggesting emerging support.
AI Bubble: Tighter financial conditions and rising CDS costs are pressuring funding for AI-related tech, contributing to NASDAQ weakness and greater investor skepticism toward cash flows.
Private Credit: Concerns are rising that private credit—linked to BNPL and other consumer loans—could transmit stress to conventional banks via non-bank conduits, posing potential systemic risks.
Consumer and Labor: Higher oil acts as a tax on consumers and gig workers (Uber (UBER), Lyft (LYFT), DoorDash (DASH)), while declining real wages and rising layoffs point to weakening demand.
Fed and Inflation: The Fed may face a demand shock rather than a persistent supply shock; inflation expectations (e.g., TIP ETF) are easing, complicating the rate-cut calculus amid politics.
Market Outlook: Rising policy uncertainty, a slowing labor market, and debt concerns favor defensive positioning and income generation over speculative growth exposure.
Transcript
We've never seen anything like this. Even during the Great Recession, the most we'd seen was 11 consecutive. Now we've seen 13. It's not actually no jobs that were created in 2025, but actually jobs were destroyed. We see the initial jobless claims data every Thursday morning and we think, well, that's a benign number. Well, that's not when you consider that that again only a quarter of unemployed Americans are actually collecting are actually even filing for unemployment. I'm back now with Danielle T. Martino Booth, CEO of QI Research, Fed Pivot. Is it coming anytime soon? We'll talk about that. We'll talk about what's next for inflation and the broad economy and how long consumers can stay afloat before oil takes over our entire wallets. Danielle, welcome back. >> Uh it's great to be back with you. It's been some time, David. Happy to be here. >> I'm happy to have you back. Let's recap what's happened uh since you were on the show a couple months ago. Um the top of mind news item for everybody is how the uh Street of Hormuz closure if it remains closed for the foreseeable future is going to impact capital markets, consumers uh and Fed policy. We'll talk about all these measures today. Uh but first focusing on the consumer. At what point does the consumer give in? Oil is a relatively inelastic good, meaning even if the price goes up, people will still need to buy it. But the question isn't so much whether or not people will continue to consume oil. The question is how long people will consume oil at higher prices before they start cutting back on spending on discretionary goods. >> Uh you know that's a great question and it's what we're all talking about these days. Um you know if you look at uh something that I follow closely and something that I think the world follows more closely which is true inflation. Now that it's on the Bloomberg terminal um we we can follow it more closely track it with other series. um you're seeing core trueflation uh running appreciably below uh that of headline trueflation. Headline trueflation is around call it 1.75% core is around 1.3% both still below the Fed's 2% target. But when you're seeing core run below headline, that's telling you that consumers are already cutting back on um discretionary purchases and that's going to hurt companies that were already hurting uh to an even greater extent. Um and I think the important thing to weave in here with two weeks to go until tax day and when we typically say tax day, we mean tax day in the United States as in people have to pay their taxes. So, we're almost all the way through tax refund season, and there were great hopes going in because of one big beautiful bill that the average tax refund in 2026 was going to be $1,000 higher than what it was in 2025. We were skeptical of that at QI. And as things turn out with the latest week in hand, the marginal increase is about $350 yearover-year. That makes a big difference for auto automobile dealers. It makes a big difference for um inflation and it makes a big difference for the buffer that a lot of households thought they had before this war started with Iran in terms of what they were going to do with that tax refund. Now it's going into their gas tanks and that had that will have ripple effects. And that's just for for households that received a tax refund. uh for those who don't, especially these gig workers, 1099 workers who don't even um get tax refunds, uh those higher oil prices are coming straight out of their wallets. And you can compound that effect for the millions and millions of workers that we've seen not collecting unemployment benefits, but rather going into the gig economy and driving for ride share, Uber, Lift, Door Dash. Think about the effect that high gasoline prices are having on these particular kinds of workers. They've got to fill up their gas tanks to work in addition to having to pay more to begin with. So, you know, if I could throw something out there, David, that I think will surprise you. Um, of all of the unemployed workers in the United States right now, only about one in four is collecting unemployment insurance. And that's cuz the math doesn't work. We see the initial jobless claims data every Thursday morning and we think well that's a benign number. Well, that's not when you consider that that again only a quarter of unemployed Americans are actually collecting are actually even filing for unemployment. And that's because you know 50 years ago when you applied for unemployment benefits it covered about 2/3 of what your living needs were. Today that's been cut in half. They only cover about onethird. So that's why we've seen so many people not applying for initial jobless claims and working in the gig economy. But again, these oil prices are eating at hold the average of $75 a week at the margin that people are spending to fill up their gas, excuse me, $75 a month at the margin that people are spending to fill up their gas tanks. That's going to eat up a lot of emergency cushions very quickly. >> I'd like to play for you um this clip. We're going to come back to the jobs market in just a bit when we talk about Fed policy in more detail. I'd like to play for you this clip of uh Fed Chair Jerome Powell um at a talk at Harvard University out just today. This is from CNBC. Take a listen. >> In the Middle East and the effect on energy prices. Indeed, this classroom is familiar with that question from the last problem set where we asked, "How would you advise the Fed to respond to the rising price of oil?" And we teach that when there's a demand shock, it's a pretty natural set of recommendations that emerge for the Fed. But when there's a supply shock like this energy price shock, there's trade-offs that the Fed has to juggle. How do you make those trade-offs in general? And how do you make those trade-offs in this particular instance? And can you help everyone with their piece? >> Well, maybe they should tell me. Um, sure. So, it's it's you start with what you said. Um, you know, our tools work on demand. Higher rates will tend to moderate demand. Lower rates will tend to stimulate demand. And when you have a supply shock, we our our tool doesn't have meaningful shorter term effects on supply. So, uh, so when you have a supply shock, the first question is, do you respond to it? And the the classic question has been around energy, uh, just in general. I'm not really speaking about the current situation, although I'll get to that, I guess, but uh, you know, energy shocks have tended to come and go pretty quickly. Monetary policy works with long and variable lags, famously. And so by the time the effects of of a tightening in monetary policy take effect, uh, you know, the the oil price shock is probably long gone and you're, you know, you're you're weighing on the economy at a time when it's not appropriate. So the tendency is to look through any kind of a supply shock. But a critical essential aspect of that is you have to have to carefully monitor inflation expectations because you can have a series of these supply shocks and that can lead you know the public generally businesses price setters households lead them to start expecting higher inflation over time. >> What's your comment to that remark? Well, what what Cher Powell is saying is we don't want for inflation expectations to become ingrained in household psyches uh because that can permanently raise what their anticipation is going to be for inflation going forward. Um you know, I I would continue on his thoughts by saying if that is the case, then you're going to uh further impair household spending on anything but essentials. Again, with the caveat that so many households are already only spending what they have on essentials because we're in the process of wages disinflating. So paychecks um are smaller than they than they used to be in the face of this supply shock. So you could really end up setting up for a a you know an adverse feedback loop which is which is what economists call it in which higher gas prices anticipation that they're going to stay high feed through to other areas of the economy perpetuating the cycle of layoffs and an increasing unemployment rate. Before we continue, I want to bring to your attention today's sponsor, Monetary Metals. Now most people think of gold as something you buy and store. Monetary Metals takes a different approach. Instead of just holding gold and waiting for price appreciation, you can earn a yield on it paid in physical ounces. Through their leasing platform, investors can earn up to 4% annually with yield paid monthly in ounces. That means your return is measured in gold, not just in currency terms. Rather than sitting idle while you pay storage costs, your gold generates income. The metal remains your asset and can be redeemed at any time. Thousands of investors are already earning monthly interest in gold through monetary medals. Visit monetary-medals.com/lin link in the description down below or scan the QR code here to learn more. Yeah. So, here is a chart of the Tanganger yield uh US 10ear yield. Uh and it's been rising ever since March uh early March. What is the bond market telling us, Danielle? Well, I think the bond market was initially saying that we were going to be seeing this higher inflation and over the weekend this great debate broke out. um JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, they started saying, you know, we have to be really careful though because this inflation shock could turn into a demand shock and and and backfire uh such that the Fed's greater concern would become that of growth slowing, which is why we've seen such a dramatic reversal in and yields coming down today. we're kind of seeing the culmination of this debate um showing in a a flattening of the yield curve and yields coming down across the curve. >> Okay. Do you see a scenario in which the DXY and I'll just pull up the DXY here for you. Uh the DXY has also been trending up ever since the Iran war broke out as uh investors globally sought the US dollar as a safe haven. Do you see a scenario in which the DXY reaches 120 this year? It's currently at 100. You know, it's really hard to say, David, there are so many different um factors. I'm I'm not an I'm not an FX expert, >> but I will I will say this much. In times of global distress, we do tend to see the dollar treated as the safe haven. If this is going to be a prolonged um situation in Iran, then I you would think that the dollar would find continue to find support here um as people flock to it, especially a lot of the countries that borrow in dollars. >> The last FOMC meeting a couple weeks ago was dominated by questions regarding inflation expectations that the Fed has and how they will respond to higher oil prices. Just going off the clip that I played for you plus the FOMC conference that we saw a couple weeks ago, putting these pieces together, what do you think the Fed is going to do in response to the closure of the straightfor? So, I think that right now because you can't talk about the Fed without talking about politics, that a lot of the more hawkish members or at least hawkish sounding members of the Federal Open Market Committee are going to be looking for any excuse that they can possibly get to not lower interest rates for this administration. So if this is if this is cover, if this is something from them to hide behind, they'll take it and they'll use this and extrapolate it out and say that it's going to be a lasting supply shock instead of being what it is going to become in what it's is clearly becoming, which is which is a demand shock. >> Okay. Well, the US labor market shows signs of slowing down early uh 2026. Hiring slowed, the unemployment rose from 4.3% to 4.4% 4% and we saw a surprise increase in um uh sorry a surprise loss rather in in the number of jobs in the payroll numbers. 92,000 jobs lost um as of the last report. Now Powell himself said that factoring in revisions and seasonal adjustments 2025 added no jobs. Does the labor market need the Federal Reserve to loosen monetary policy? Now, >> I certainly think if you ask any small business owner in America that question, and I can answer on the behalf of those small business owners, the answer would be an unequivocal absolutely yes, they do. That monetary policy is too tight, especially when you when you factor in where inflation truly is, if you look at trueflation, which leads the CPI by 45 days, they would say that real interest rates adjusted for inflation are prohibitively high. and that yes, the Fed should indeed be lowering interest rates. David, we had 13 consecutive months of real time revisions to the employment data. I'm not talking about annual benchmark revisions that you have to wait 18 months to get your hands on or the quarterly census of employment and wages. I'm talking about real time revisions to the employment data that we receive every non-farm payroll Friday. We've seen 13 consecutive months of downward revisions. We've never seen anything like this. Even during the Great Financial Crisis, even during the Great Recession, the most we'd seen was 11 consecutive. Now, we've seen 13. And we know from deeper revisions that we've seen in 2025 that it's not actually no jobs that were created in 2025, but actually jobs were destroyed in 2025. This is data that came out subsequent to the most recent FOMC meeting. So, um, the idea that we can get by with zero net job creation because of out migration and immigration, um, really being killed by the Trump administration, that goes out the window when you learn that there's been actual job destruction. And by the way, Macro Edge, which leads Challenger Gray in Christmas, they're tracking more than 100,000 jobs, job cut announcements for the month of March. So, we're seeing a continuation of this trend going forward. Is the Fed falling behind on its labor mandate? Absolutely, it is. >> Consumers ultimately need to feel richer or actually not just feel richer, but actually be richer because their real wages are rising faster uh than inflation. Real wages are rising uh before they start spending more money. And so even if the Fed were to lower rates, will we see a fallacy in which consumers have this illusion of wealth and start spending money they don't have, rack up their credit cards and make the situation even worse down the line? >> That's possible. Um if we were, you know, to go to the zero bound um take take the bed funds rate all the way down, something like that could be conceivable. But at the same time, you would have to have credit standards loosening in order to facilitate that. And we we're actually seeing the opposite of that. We're seeing credit standards tightening. Uh whether you're talking about automobile loans, credit cards, uh so you have to have it takes two to tango and I think until banks stop realizing losses on consumer loans that we're not going to see both sides of the equation come into play. But again, the zero bound, you know, any anything is possible once we go there. But we're not there yet. Well, everyone's also watching who is going to be the next Fed chair and when. >> I think it's a critical question. Pal himself has been asked this at the last FOMC conference when a reporter asked him, well, if um if hasn't been decided, who will be your replacement? Will you stay on? His answer was yes. Uh what where do you see this heading? >> So, I'm going to go with the betting markets here. And right now there's a 29% chance that Powell will uh will be out by June. There's a 51% chance that he'll be out by August. So, the markets are beginning to interpret kind of the magnitude of the administration's blunder in not pushing through and doing everything that they can to drop the criminal charges against Jay Powell, allowing a pathway for Kevin Worsh to be confirmed by the Senate. And we know that until that happens that Jay Powell will be the man behind the podium at FOMC meetings because he was legally elected by all 18 other members of the Federal Open Market Committee in January to be chair of the Federal Open Market Committee for the calendar year, full calendar year 2026. And he is indeed stated if I if there's no replacement for me, yeah, I'll still be here. Now that we have the Iran war uh in in full motion, now that the war is broken out, does it really ultimately matter when Kevin Worsh or whoever else uh is the is the um successor to to to Powell takes office? In other words, whoever is next after Powell is going to have his hands tied >> because of higher inflation expectations from what's currently happening, not even what's about to happen. So, does it really matter when Kevin Worsh becomes Fed chair? Is he going to be ultimately more dovish, significantly more dovish than Powell right now? >> Oh, I think he will be. If you look at 5-year inflation um expectations um through the swaps market, they've come down so much, David. So, I think anybody uh any central banker worth their salt will certainly see that inflation expectations further out are falling. Um, so no, I think it's critical when Kevin Worsh takes office because as Tre Powell has no incentive at all, regardless of what the data says to throw any favors to this administration going into the midterm elections. >> That's a good point. If you look at uh something like the TIP ETF, which tracks inflation expectations, it has been falling, especially uh longer term. Why is that? Can you just assign a reason as to why inflation expectations could be falling right now? >> Well, you've got layoffs that are increasing, which means paychecks are shrinking, which means people have less money to spend, which means people spend less money. >> Fair enough. So, people don't care about uh don't think, sorry, that's not that's not fair to say. People don't think that the oil shock is here to stay. It's going to be transitory. >> That is the current thinking. Um, but of course there's a broader spectrum of prices that are affected and to the extent that oil prices remain high, there's even less as a factor of time to spend on everything else. >> Okay. I guess when inflation expectations are going down, meaning people don't think prices are going to rise as much, do you see this becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy where people just kind of wait to make uh big purchases on things and then prices get driven driven down as a result? >> I I certainly think that's the case, especially because we've had um stubbornly high mortgage rates. So, home prices certainly haven't fallen to the extent that they have. That's why we have a record number of of of buyer, excuse me, of sellers outnumbering buyers right now. And that is indicative of a buyer strike. This is fresh red fin data that just came out a few days ago. Um, and what home buyers are are perceiving is that home prices have not fallen near enough. So, um, and and the reason I bring up home prices is because that's the biggest purchase that a household can make. And then that purchase in turn leads to other types of purchases, things you're going to put inside of the house, um, moving expenses. So, no, I I I think certainly that it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy and that David feeds further back into this loop of if I'm Joe Q company and I'm not selling as many goods and or services as I was before, then I'm going to have to continue controlling the one cost that I can, which is labor. >> So, what needs to happen this year or next to turn the labor market around? I think we need um more than anything else, we need clarity on what the business backdrop is going to be and and signs that uh that anybody in Washington, be it the Federal Reserve or the the administration or Congress, uh that anybody has the best interests of corporate America, big and small, at heart, such that policies are created to facilitate the growth of payrolls. as opposed to companies remaining in this kind of paralyzed state of either a hiring freeze or worse. We're going to continue to do what we can to cut costs, which means we're going to continue to reduce headcount. This has to reverse. This has to shift and the shift has to come from on high from leadership. >> So basically what you're saying is more layoffs will happen before this gets better >> unless something dramatic changes because again we're not seeing the benefits that we were supposed to be seeing at this point from one big beautiful bill. M do you think corporate margins will actually increase or improve from here on because of higher layoffs um especially if people are companies are claiming to lay people off because of AI and automation taking over? >> Well, as we're learning quickly that's becoming that that's become a red herring. There was overhiring done in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic and I think right now a lot of companies are right sizing um their workforces. the the risk is if they go beyond that point and start to reduce workforces beyond where they were in 2020. Um and again I I I think that the possibility of going that way I is increasing as a factor of time especially given this latest energy shock that's filtering through to other costs rising. Fertilizer is the most obvious example. Um, so to the extent that that companies are getting their margins squeezed again, think of what happened with tariffs and what companies did to protect their margins in the face of higher input costs due to tariffs. Now they're higher input costs due to gasoline prices, energy prices, that filtering through to other input costs. It's the same exact backdrop. It's the same exact setup that will cause companies to then cut another layer of costs. So, the economy is facing a stiff labor market where a difficult environment for the labor market, let's put it that way. Oil shock and now also a debt crisis, which Jerome Pow himself has admitted is a problem. Take a listen to 20 seconds of this. >> It's it's really important that we get back to we don't have to pay the debt down. We just need to to to have, you know, primary balance and and begin to have the economy actually growing better, growing more quickly than the economy. It will it will not end well if we don't do something fairly soon. And this is not the Fed's job, of course, and I pretty much limit myself to those high level points which which essentially everyone ignores. >> He's saying the debt will is growing faster than the growth rate of the economy. It will not end well unless we do something soon. Who's we? >> I think he refers to we with a capital W as in we the people, >> right? So, he's not talking about monetizing the debt anytime soon, buying back a lot of debt and issuing money to do so. >> Uh, he's certainly not talking about that. And that's exactly what the Fed did in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic hitting. They monetized trillions of dollars of debt. >> That's right. That's right. So you don't see that happening again. I mean the trillion 39 trillion in national debt was just 17th of March that was announced. Uh CB congressional budget office is projecting the net interest from the debt alone to be $2.1 trillion by 2036. Double what it is currently. So uh what can the Fed do? Should they do anything? By the way, should should the Fed do anything or just leave it to Congress? >> I think the Fed has needed to leave it to Congress for a very long time, David, and has not. So, anytime there's any kind of a recession or a crisis of any kind, the Fed comes in, lowers interest rates to the zero bound. That's been what's what's been done since 2008, which only encourages more debt to be taken on because interest costs decline. I think one of the few governors on fiscal spending right now is the spectre of having to service that debt which as you say could be in the $2 trillion range with within a matter of a decade. >> How does higher debt and higher interest payments on the debt affect the American people the regular person? >> Well, to the extent that the United States fiscal authorities are being inefficient with taxpayer revenues and servicing debt is by definition inefficient. Um there is less in the way of fiscal latitude to invest in growth opportunities for the US economy that would come from fiscal authorities such as expanding vocational training, increasing incentives for uh for individuals to get trade type of skills. Um these are all things that can be done when your fiscal house is in order. uh they're procluded from being done. However, when you're concerned about all the money that you need to take in from taxpayers just in order to service that debt. >> So, when it comes to asset allocation, the priorities right now are to survive what is looking at looking like no resolution so far to this oil crisis. We're looking at a weaker labor market as we talked about and rising debt that isn't going to be resolved anytime soon. Any other themes that investors need to take into account? bigger theme for 2026. >> Well, I think something that we talked about um in our last few discussions and that's that that that investors were going to be looking for safe harbors. They were going to be looking for dividend producing stocks to the extent that they were going to be in the stock market. Um that comes out of the hands of growth stocks that don't pay dividends. Uh so I I think we're seeing with some of the largest inflows to dividend paying stocks uh in the most recent flows data, we're seeing individual investors look for ways to hedge their portfolios. So they don't want to be necessarily exposed to the go- go mag 7 that they would have been the last few years. They want to have a reassurance that they're going to that there's going to be an income stream um in addition to the the the portion of their portfolio that they've already got in truly safe assets that continue to throw off by the way decent yields because we're still in a higher for longer interest rate regime. >> You mentioned that the AI bubble last time you were on the show you mentioned that the AI bubble needs more borrowing and more funding uh to last so or to continue growing. So, with the Fed's monetary policy still not easing just yet, do you think there's going to be less lending to these tech companies this year, which may mean less capex, which may mean lower valuations? >> I I think we're certainly seeing evidence of that just through the prism of what it costs to ensure against some of these big AI companies um defaulting. And that's what credit default swaps are by definition. So the more we see the cost to ensure against their demise increase, the greater expense to these companies, the the more it's going to cost them to be able to access those funding markets. And that's certainly something that we've seen in the correction in the NASDAQ these last few weeks. There there's there's a lot of skepticism right now that's being attached. Whereas a year ago it was it was we'll we'll lend blind. will oversubscribe to the bond offering because we know that this is money good. Now there's there's a lot more skepticism being attached to the prospects for these companies as their cash flow comes crashing down. >> The NASDAQ's already down 13% since the beginning of 2026. Danielle, is it over? >> I I don't think it's over until the the sector of uncertainty, the clouds that right now are over the markets begin to clear. Um, yeah. >> And right now that's certainly not the case. There is no functionality to speak of at all in Washington DC. US households are on their knees. Layoffs are continuing unabated and we're heading into the midterm election season with a very disgruntled voting class. >> Is there a sector that you see has still bullish sentiment right now as we're speaking? Um, like like I mentioned, the the stock market uh isn't doing well. the uh the precious metal sector has been on a continuous decline ever since the beginning of March and now interest is waning. Um Bitcoin is still lethargic at best and um oil seems to be the only thing exploding in the headlines uh and exploding at the pump quite literally. So what um where do people go right now is the question. And by the way, yields are going up. So bonds aren't a great place to be. >> Well um actually I mean if if you look at the the U-turn in yields it's pretty pretty dramatic. And I know we're just talking about one day here. Um but but no, certainly energy has been a safer place to be and this is well before missiles began to fly at the beginning of of of of March. Um but I think again I think investors are looking for safety. And when you talk about energy stocks doing so much better than the rest of the broad market, that's indicative of the fact that they also pay dividends, David, and they always have. And when you look at a company like Chevron that's never cut its dividend, right? That that is perceived as being safe in addition right now to being, you know, a growth stock. But at some point, even the oil companies will tell you that that oil prices can become prohibitively high to the extent that even they start to see slower growth. Um, and I would also point out that that last uh Friday saw something very unusual, and that's that we did see precious metals find a floor and begin to get bid up again. and that that along with what we saw as a preview today. We saw short-term the short end of the yield curve yields begin to come down last Friday. A lot of people were pointing to that over the prior weekend. Look, we're seeing precious metals find a floor, probably fewer margin calls and people liquidating those positions to satisfy what the margin calls were with what they couldn't sell. And again, the the yields at the short end of the yield curve beginning to come down on Friday. That precaged what we're seeing today. And again, we're we're seeing support for the precious metals once again. This is our second day. >> Okay. Excellent. Tell us what what uh we can expect to learn from you at the Daily Feather and what you're working on currently. >> So, at the Daily Feather right now, we really are focusing on the end of the restocking cycle. And that's something that we saw uh manifest in some of the manufacturing uh data. So, uh, we saw kind of a bump in industrial activity and we're seeing kind of the tail end of that Eb, meaning that we're probably going to go right back into the long-standing industrial recession that we've been in. And of course, we're following the bankruptcy cycle and private credit and the potential for anything systemic to flow uh from that. These are the things that we cover in the daily feather. These are the things that we cover in the weekly quill for our clients. >> Yeah, let's talk about that uh for just a minute. We haven't talked about private credit. So the concerns uh that you've seen in the headlines, private credit redemptions uh being limited as investors sought to uh get out of that market, how systemic is this issue? >> You know, it's really hard to say. Uh you know, back when we were concerned that subprime was a systemic issue, and this is something that I wrote about years ago, a lot of that had to do with the source of funding. And we talk about private credit and software in the same sentence, but we forget that it is also private credit that has been funding buy now pay later. It's been funding a lot of the the the the racier forms of of household debt that's been tapped in recent years. And to the extent that these are connected back straight into the conventional banking system through non-depository financial institution lending, I I think it's important that we not just shrug away any potential for this to be uh systemic because again there is a conduit. There's a conduit. There's a connection between what's going on with the non-banks and what's going on with the conventional banks. >> But by the way, I see you're a speaker at the uh Bitcoin Las Vegas conference. It's the world's largest Bitcoin conference coming up. Um, are you still attending? And if so, tell us about um, uh, what you're going to be speaking about. >> Well, I'll be speaking about what the two of us are speaking about because the whole world wants to know what's happening with the Federal Reserve and monetary policy and interest rates and the macro economy going forward. I'll be speaking about all the things in my wheelhouse. And as we know, you know, that's a month away. Anything could change between now and then. >> Absolutely. Okay. Well, we look forward to that. And, uh, thank you so much for coming to the show. We'll put the link down to Qi Research in the description. So, please follow Danielle and Qi Research down there. Thank you so much once again, Danielle. Good to see you and we'll see you soon. >> Likewise. Look, look forward to seeing you in person. Thank you. >> Yeah. Thank you. And thank you for watching. Don't forget to like and subscribe.
Fed Must Act Now Or System Collapses: 'Never Seen Anything Like This' | Danielle DiMartino Booth
Summary
Transcript
We've never seen anything like this. Even during the Great Recession, the most we'd seen was 11 consecutive. Now we've seen 13. It's not actually no jobs that were created in 2025, but actually jobs were destroyed. We see the initial jobless claims data every Thursday morning and we think, well, that's a benign number. Well, that's not when you consider that that again only a quarter of unemployed Americans are actually collecting are actually even filing for unemployment. I'm back now with Danielle T. Martino Booth, CEO of QI Research, Fed Pivot. Is it coming anytime soon? We'll talk about that. We'll talk about what's next for inflation and the broad economy and how long consumers can stay afloat before oil takes over our entire wallets. Danielle, welcome back. >> Uh it's great to be back with you. It's been some time, David. Happy to be here. >> I'm happy to have you back. Let's recap what's happened uh since you were on the show a couple months ago. Um the top of mind news item for everybody is how the uh Street of Hormuz closure if it remains closed for the foreseeable future is going to impact capital markets, consumers uh and Fed policy. We'll talk about all these measures today. Uh but first focusing on the consumer. At what point does the consumer give in? Oil is a relatively inelastic good, meaning even if the price goes up, people will still need to buy it. But the question isn't so much whether or not people will continue to consume oil. The question is how long people will consume oil at higher prices before they start cutting back on spending on discretionary goods. >> Uh you know that's a great question and it's what we're all talking about these days. Um you know if you look at uh something that I follow closely and something that I think the world follows more closely which is true inflation. Now that it's on the Bloomberg terminal um we we can follow it more closely track it with other series. um you're seeing core trueflation uh running appreciably below uh that of headline trueflation. Headline trueflation is around call it 1.75% core is around 1.3% both still below the Fed's 2% target. But when you're seeing core run below headline, that's telling you that consumers are already cutting back on um discretionary purchases and that's going to hurt companies that were already hurting uh to an even greater extent. Um and I think the important thing to weave in here with two weeks to go until tax day and when we typically say tax day, we mean tax day in the United States as in people have to pay their taxes. So, we're almost all the way through tax refund season, and there were great hopes going in because of one big beautiful bill that the average tax refund in 2026 was going to be $1,000 higher than what it was in 2025. We were skeptical of that at QI. And as things turn out with the latest week in hand, the marginal increase is about $350 yearover-year. That makes a big difference for auto automobile dealers. It makes a big difference for um inflation and it makes a big difference for the buffer that a lot of households thought they had before this war started with Iran in terms of what they were going to do with that tax refund. Now it's going into their gas tanks and that had that will have ripple effects. And that's just for for households that received a tax refund. uh for those who don't, especially these gig workers, 1099 workers who don't even um get tax refunds, uh those higher oil prices are coming straight out of their wallets. And you can compound that effect for the millions and millions of workers that we've seen not collecting unemployment benefits, but rather going into the gig economy and driving for ride share, Uber, Lift, Door Dash. Think about the effect that high gasoline prices are having on these particular kinds of workers. They've got to fill up their gas tanks to work in addition to having to pay more to begin with. So, you know, if I could throw something out there, David, that I think will surprise you. Um, of all of the unemployed workers in the United States right now, only about one in four is collecting unemployment insurance. And that's cuz the math doesn't work. We see the initial jobless claims data every Thursday morning and we think well that's a benign number. Well, that's not when you consider that that again only a quarter of unemployed Americans are actually collecting are actually even filing for unemployment. And that's because you know 50 years ago when you applied for unemployment benefits it covered about 2/3 of what your living needs were. Today that's been cut in half. They only cover about onethird. So that's why we've seen so many people not applying for initial jobless claims and working in the gig economy. But again, these oil prices are eating at hold the average of $75 a week at the margin that people are spending to fill up their gas, excuse me, $75 a month at the margin that people are spending to fill up their gas tanks. That's going to eat up a lot of emergency cushions very quickly. >> I'd like to play for you um this clip. We're going to come back to the jobs market in just a bit when we talk about Fed policy in more detail. I'd like to play for you this clip of uh Fed Chair Jerome Powell um at a talk at Harvard University out just today. This is from CNBC. Take a listen. >> In the Middle East and the effect on energy prices. Indeed, this classroom is familiar with that question from the last problem set where we asked, "How would you advise the Fed to respond to the rising price of oil?" And we teach that when there's a demand shock, it's a pretty natural set of recommendations that emerge for the Fed. But when there's a supply shock like this energy price shock, there's trade-offs that the Fed has to juggle. How do you make those trade-offs in general? And how do you make those trade-offs in this particular instance? And can you help everyone with their piece? >> Well, maybe they should tell me. Um, sure. So, it's it's you start with what you said. Um, you know, our tools work on demand. Higher rates will tend to moderate demand. Lower rates will tend to stimulate demand. And when you have a supply shock, we our our tool doesn't have meaningful shorter term effects on supply. So, uh, so when you have a supply shock, the first question is, do you respond to it? And the the classic question has been around energy, uh, just in general. I'm not really speaking about the current situation, although I'll get to that, I guess, but uh, you know, energy shocks have tended to come and go pretty quickly. Monetary policy works with long and variable lags, famously. And so by the time the effects of of a tightening in monetary policy take effect, uh, you know, the the oil price shock is probably long gone and you're, you know, you're you're weighing on the economy at a time when it's not appropriate. So the tendency is to look through any kind of a supply shock. But a critical essential aspect of that is you have to have to carefully monitor inflation expectations because you can have a series of these supply shocks and that can lead you know the public generally businesses price setters households lead them to start expecting higher inflation over time. >> What's your comment to that remark? Well, what what Cher Powell is saying is we don't want for inflation expectations to become ingrained in household psyches uh because that can permanently raise what their anticipation is going to be for inflation going forward. Um you know, I I would continue on his thoughts by saying if that is the case, then you're going to uh further impair household spending on anything but essentials. Again, with the caveat that so many households are already only spending what they have on essentials because we're in the process of wages disinflating. So paychecks um are smaller than they than they used to be in the face of this supply shock. So you could really end up setting up for a a you know an adverse feedback loop which is which is what economists call it in which higher gas prices anticipation that they're going to stay high feed through to other areas of the economy perpetuating the cycle of layoffs and an increasing unemployment rate. Before we continue, I want to bring to your attention today's sponsor, Monetary Metals. Now most people think of gold as something you buy and store. Monetary Metals takes a different approach. Instead of just holding gold and waiting for price appreciation, you can earn a yield on it paid in physical ounces. Through their leasing platform, investors can earn up to 4% annually with yield paid monthly in ounces. That means your return is measured in gold, not just in currency terms. Rather than sitting idle while you pay storage costs, your gold generates income. The metal remains your asset and can be redeemed at any time. Thousands of investors are already earning monthly interest in gold through monetary medals. Visit monetary-medals.com/lin link in the description down below or scan the QR code here to learn more. Yeah. So, here is a chart of the Tanganger yield uh US 10ear yield. Uh and it's been rising ever since March uh early March. What is the bond market telling us, Danielle? Well, I think the bond market was initially saying that we were going to be seeing this higher inflation and over the weekend this great debate broke out. um JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, they started saying, you know, we have to be really careful though because this inflation shock could turn into a demand shock and and and backfire uh such that the Fed's greater concern would become that of growth slowing, which is why we've seen such a dramatic reversal in and yields coming down today. we're kind of seeing the culmination of this debate um showing in a a flattening of the yield curve and yields coming down across the curve. >> Okay. Do you see a scenario in which the DXY and I'll just pull up the DXY here for you. Uh the DXY has also been trending up ever since the Iran war broke out as uh investors globally sought the US dollar as a safe haven. Do you see a scenario in which the DXY reaches 120 this year? It's currently at 100. You know, it's really hard to say, David, there are so many different um factors. I'm I'm not an I'm not an FX expert, >> but I will I will say this much. In times of global distress, we do tend to see the dollar treated as the safe haven. If this is going to be a prolonged um situation in Iran, then I you would think that the dollar would find continue to find support here um as people flock to it, especially a lot of the countries that borrow in dollars. >> The last FOMC meeting a couple weeks ago was dominated by questions regarding inflation expectations that the Fed has and how they will respond to higher oil prices. Just going off the clip that I played for you plus the FOMC conference that we saw a couple weeks ago, putting these pieces together, what do you think the Fed is going to do in response to the closure of the straightfor? So, I think that right now because you can't talk about the Fed without talking about politics, that a lot of the more hawkish members or at least hawkish sounding members of the Federal Open Market Committee are going to be looking for any excuse that they can possibly get to not lower interest rates for this administration. So if this is if this is cover, if this is something from them to hide behind, they'll take it and they'll use this and extrapolate it out and say that it's going to be a lasting supply shock instead of being what it is going to become in what it's is clearly becoming, which is which is a demand shock. >> Okay. Well, the US labor market shows signs of slowing down early uh 2026. Hiring slowed, the unemployment rose from 4.3% to 4.4% 4% and we saw a surprise increase in um uh sorry a surprise loss rather in in the number of jobs in the payroll numbers. 92,000 jobs lost um as of the last report. Now Powell himself said that factoring in revisions and seasonal adjustments 2025 added no jobs. Does the labor market need the Federal Reserve to loosen monetary policy? Now, >> I certainly think if you ask any small business owner in America that question, and I can answer on the behalf of those small business owners, the answer would be an unequivocal absolutely yes, they do. That monetary policy is too tight, especially when you when you factor in where inflation truly is, if you look at trueflation, which leads the CPI by 45 days, they would say that real interest rates adjusted for inflation are prohibitively high. and that yes, the Fed should indeed be lowering interest rates. David, we had 13 consecutive months of real time revisions to the employment data. I'm not talking about annual benchmark revisions that you have to wait 18 months to get your hands on or the quarterly census of employment and wages. I'm talking about real time revisions to the employment data that we receive every non-farm payroll Friday. We've seen 13 consecutive months of downward revisions. We've never seen anything like this. Even during the Great Financial Crisis, even during the Great Recession, the most we'd seen was 11 consecutive. Now, we've seen 13. And we know from deeper revisions that we've seen in 2025 that it's not actually no jobs that were created in 2025, but actually jobs were destroyed in 2025. This is data that came out subsequent to the most recent FOMC meeting. So, um, the idea that we can get by with zero net job creation because of out migration and immigration, um, really being killed by the Trump administration, that goes out the window when you learn that there's been actual job destruction. And by the way, Macro Edge, which leads Challenger Gray in Christmas, they're tracking more than 100,000 jobs, job cut announcements for the month of March. So, we're seeing a continuation of this trend going forward. Is the Fed falling behind on its labor mandate? Absolutely, it is. >> Consumers ultimately need to feel richer or actually not just feel richer, but actually be richer because their real wages are rising faster uh than inflation. Real wages are rising uh before they start spending more money. And so even if the Fed were to lower rates, will we see a fallacy in which consumers have this illusion of wealth and start spending money they don't have, rack up their credit cards and make the situation even worse down the line? >> That's possible. Um if we were, you know, to go to the zero bound um take take the bed funds rate all the way down, something like that could be conceivable. But at the same time, you would have to have credit standards loosening in order to facilitate that. And we we're actually seeing the opposite of that. We're seeing credit standards tightening. Uh whether you're talking about automobile loans, credit cards, uh so you have to have it takes two to tango and I think until banks stop realizing losses on consumer loans that we're not going to see both sides of the equation come into play. But again, the zero bound, you know, any anything is possible once we go there. But we're not there yet. Well, everyone's also watching who is going to be the next Fed chair and when. >> I think it's a critical question. Pal himself has been asked this at the last FOMC conference when a reporter asked him, well, if um if hasn't been decided, who will be your replacement? Will you stay on? His answer was yes. Uh what where do you see this heading? >> So, I'm going to go with the betting markets here. And right now there's a 29% chance that Powell will uh will be out by June. There's a 51% chance that he'll be out by August. So, the markets are beginning to interpret kind of the magnitude of the administration's blunder in not pushing through and doing everything that they can to drop the criminal charges against Jay Powell, allowing a pathway for Kevin Worsh to be confirmed by the Senate. And we know that until that happens that Jay Powell will be the man behind the podium at FOMC meetings because he was legally elected by all 18 other members of the Federal Open Market Committee in January to be chair of the Federal Open Market Committee for the calendar year, full calendar year 2026. And he is indeed stated if I if there's no replacement for me, yeah, I'll still be here. Now that we have the Iran war uh in in full motion, now that the war is broken out, does it really ultimately matter when Kevin Worsh or whoever else uh is the is the um successor to to to Powell takes office? In other words, whoever is next after Powell is going to have his hands tied >> because of higher inflation expectations from what's currently happening, not even what's about to happen. So, does it really matter when Kevin Worsh becomes Fed chair? Is he going to be ultimately more dovish, significantly more dovish than Powell right now? >> Oh, I think he will be. If you look at 5-year inflation um expectations um through the swaps market, they've come down so much, David. So, I think anybody uh any central banker worth their salt will certainly see that inflation expectations further out are falling. Um, so no, I think it's critical when Kevin Worsh takes office because as Tre Powell has no incentive at all, regardless of what the data says to throw any favors to this administration going into the midterm elections. >> That's a good point. If you look at uh something like the TIP ETF, which tracks inflation expectations, it has been falling, especially uh longer term. Why is that? Can you just assign a reason as to why inflation expectations could be falling right now? >> Well, you've got layoffs that are increasing, which means paychecks are shrinking, which means people have less money to spend, which means people spend less money. >> Fair enough. So, people don't care about uh don't think, sorry, that's not that's not fair to say. People don't think that the oil shock is here to stay. It's going to be transitory. >> That is the current thinking. Um, but of course there's a broader spectrum of prices that are affected and to the extent that oil prices remain high, there's even less as a factor of time to spend on everything else. >> Okay. I guess when inflation expectations are going down, meaning people don't think prices are going to rise as much, do you see this becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy where people just kind of wait to make uh big purchases on things and then prices get driven driven down as a result? >> I I certainly think that's the case, especially because we've had um stubbornly high mortgage rates. So, home prices certainly haven't fallen to the extent that they have. That's why we have a record number of of of buyer, excuse me, of sellers outnumbering buyers right now. And that is indicative of a buyer strike. This is fresh red fin data that just came out a few days ago. Um, and what home buyers are are perceiving is that home prices have not fallen near enough. So, um, and and the reason I bring up home prices is because that's the biggest purchase that a household can make. And then that purchase in turn leads to other types of purchases, things you're going to put inside of the house, um, moving expenses. So, no, I I I think certainly that it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy and that David feeds further back into this loop of if I'm Joe Q company and I'm not selling as many goods and or services as I was before, then I'm going to have to continue controlling the one cost that I can, which is labor. >> So, what needs to happen this year or next to turn the labor market around? I think we need um more than anything else, we need clarity on what the business backdrop is going to be and and signs that uh that anybody in Washington, be it the Federal Reserve or the the administration or Congress, uh that anybody has the best interests of corporate America, big and small, at heart, such that policies are created to facilitate the growth of payrolls. as opposed to companies remaining in this kind of paralyzed state of either a hiring freeze or worse. We're going to continue to do what we can to cut costs, which means we're going to continue to reduce headcount. This has to reverse. This has to shift and the shift has to come from on high from leadership. >> So basically what you're saying is more layoffs will happen before this gets better >> unless something dramatic changes because again we're not seeing the benefits that we were supposed to be seeing at this point from one big beautiful bill. M do you think corporate margins will actually increase or improve from here on because of higher layoffs um especially if people are companies are claiming to lay people off because of AI and automation taking over? >> Well, as we're learning quickly that's becoming that that's become a red herring. There was overhiring done in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic and I think right now a lot of companies are right sizing um their workforces. the the risk is if they go beyond that point and start to reduce workforces beyond where they were in 2020. Um and again I I I think that the possibility of going that way I is increasing as a factor of time especially given this latest energy shock that's filtering through to other costs rising. Fertilizer is the most obvious example. Um, so to the extent that that companies are getting their margins squeezed again, think of what happened with tariffs and what companies did to protect their margins in the face of higher input costs due to tariffs. Now they're higher input costs due to gasoline prices, energy prices, that filtering through to other input costs. It's the same exact backdrop. It's the same exact setup that will cause companies to then cut another layer of costs. So, the economy is facing a stiff labor market where a difficult environment for the labor market, let's put it that way. Oil shock and now also a debt crisis, which Jerome Pow himself has admitted is a problem. Take a listen to 20 seconds of this. >> It's it's really important that we get back to we don't have to pay the debt down. We just need to to to have, you know, primary balance and and begin to have the economy actually growing better, growing more quickly than the economy. It will it will not end well if we don't do something fairly soon. And this is not the Fed's job, of course, and I pretty much limit myself to those high level points which which essentially everyone ignores. >> He's saying the debt will is growing faster than the growth rate of the economy. It will not end well unless we do something soon. Who's we? >> I think he refers to we with a capital W as in we the people, >> right? So, he's not talking about monetizing the debt anytime soon, buying back a lot of debt and issuing money to do so. >> Uh, he's certainly not talking about that. And that's exactly what the Fed did in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic hitting. They monetized trillions of dollars of debt. >> That's right. That's right. So you don't see that happening again. I mean the trillion 39 trillion in national debt was just 17th of March that was announced. Uh CB congressional budget office is projecting the net interest from the debt alone to be $2.1 trillion by 2036. Double what it is currently. So uh what can the Fed do? Should they do anything? By the way, should should the Fed do anything or just leave it to Congress? >> I think the Fed has needed to leave it to Congress for a very long time, David, and has not. So, anytime there's any kind of a recession or a crisis of any kind, the Fed comes in, lowers interest rates to the zero bound. That's been what's what's been done since 2008, which only encourages more debt to be taken on because interest costs decline. I think one of the few governors on fiscal spending right now is the spectre of having to service that debt which as you say could be in the $2 trillion range with within a matter of a decade. >> How does higher debt and higher interest payments on the debt affect the American people the regular person? >> Well, to the extent that the United States fiscal authorities are being inefficient with taxpayer revenues and servicing debt is by definition inefficient. Um there is less in the way of fiscal latitude to invest in growth opportunities for the US economy that would come from fiscal authorities such as expanding vocational training, increasing incentives for uh for individuals to get trade type of skills. Um these are all things that can be done when your fiscal house is in order. uh they're procluded from being done. However, when you're concerned about all the money that you need to take in from taxpayers just in order to service that debt. >> So, when it comes to asset allocation, the priorities right now are to survive what is looking at looking like no resolution so far to this oil crisis. We're looking at a weaker labor market as we talked about and rising debt that isn't going to be resolved anytime soon. Any other themes that investors need to take into account? bigger theme for 2026. >> Well, I think something that we talked about um in our last few discussions and that's that that that investors were going to be looking for safe harbors. They were going to be looking for dividend producing stocks to the extent that they were going to be in the stock market. Um that comes out of the hands of growth stocks that don't pay dividends. Uh so I I think we're seeing with some of the largest inflows to dividend paying stocks uh in the most recent flows data, we're seeing individual investors look for ways to hedge their portfolios. So they don't want to be necessarily exposed to the go- go mag 7 that they would have been the last few years. They want to have a reassurance that they're going to that there's going to be an income stream um in addition to the the the portion of their portfolio that they've already got in truly safe assets that continue to throw off by the way decent yields because we're still in a higher for longer interest rate regime. >> You mentioned that the AI bubble last time you were on the show you mentioned that the AI bubble needs more borrowing and more funding uh to last so or to continue growing. So, with the Fed's monetary policy still not easing just yet, do you think there's going to be less lending to these tech companies this year, which may mean less capex, which may mean lower valuations? >> I I think we're certainly seeing evidence of that just through the prism of what it costs to ensure against some of these big AI companies um defaulting. And that's what credit default swaps are by definition. So the more we see the cost to ensure against their demise increase, the greater expense to these companies, the the more it's going to cost them to be able to access those funding markets. And that's certainly something that we've seen in the correction in the NASDAQ these last few weeks. There there's there's a lot of skepticism right now that's being attached. Whereas a year ago it was it was we'll we'll lend blind. will oversubscribe to the bond offering because we know that this is money good. Now there's there's a lot more skepticism being attached to the prospects for these companies as their cash flow comes crashing down. >> The NASDAQ's already down 13% since the beginning of 2026. Danielle, is it over? >> I I don't think it's over until the the sector of uncertainty, the clouds that right now are over the markets begin to clear. Um, yeah. >> And right now that's certainly not the case. There is no functionality to speak of at all in Washington DC. US households are on their knees. Layoffs are continuing unabated and we're heading into the midterm election season with a very disgruntled voting class. >> Is there a sector that you see has still bullish sentiment right now as we're speaking? Um, like like I mentioned, the the stock market uh isn't doing well. the uh the precious metal sector has been on a continuous decline ever since the beginning of March and now interest is waning. Um Bitcoin is still lethargic at best and um oil seems to be the only thing exploding in the headlines uh and exploding at the pump quite literally. So what um where do people go right now is the question. And by the way, yields are going up. So bonds aren't a great place to be. >> Well um actually I mean if if you look at the the U-turn in yields it's pretty pretty dramatic. And I know we're just talking about one day here. Um but but no, certainly energy has been a safer place to be and this is well before missiles began to fly at the beginning of of of of March. Um but I think again I think investors are looking for safety. And when you talk about energy stocks doing so much better than the rest of the broad market, that's indicative of the fact that they also pay dividends, David, and they always have. And when you look at a company like Chevron that's never cut its dividend, right? That that is perceived as being safe in addition right now to being, you know, a growth stock. But at some point, even the oil companies will tell you that that oil prices can become prohibitively high to the extent that even they start to see slower growth. Um, and I would also point out that that last uh Friday saw something very unusual, and that's that we did see precious metals find a floor and begin to get bid up again. and that that along with what we saw as a preview today. We saw short-term the short end of the yield curve yields begin to come down last Friday. A lot of people were pointing to that over the prior weekend. Look, we're seeing precious metals find a floor, probably fewer margin calls and people liquidating those positions to satisfy what the margin calls were with what they couldn't sell. And again, the the yields at the short end of the yield curve beginning to come down on Friday. That precaged what we're seeing today. And again, we're we're seeing support for the precious metals once again. This is our second day. >> Okay. Excellent. Tell us what what uh we can expect to learn from you at the Daily Feather and what you're working on currently. >> So, at the Daily Feather right now, we really are focusing on the end of the restocking cycle. And that's something that we saw uh manifest in some of the manufacturing uh data. So, uh, we saw kind of a bump in industrial activity and we're seeing kind of the tail end of that Eb, meaning that we're probably going to go right back into the long-standing industrial recession that we've been in. And of course, we're following the bankruptcy cycle and private credit and the potential for anything systemic to flow uh from that. These are the things that we cover in the daily feather. These are the things that we cover in the weekly quill for our clients. >> Yeah, let's talk about that uh for just a minute. We haven't talked about private credit. So the concerns uh that you've seen in the headlines, private credit redemptions uh being limited as investors sought to uh get out of that market, how systemic is this issue? >> You know, it's really hard to say. Uh you know, back when we were concerned that subprime was a systemic issue, and this is something that I wrote about years ago, a lot of that had to do with the source of funding. And we talk about private credit and software in the same sentence, but we forget that it is also private credit that has been funding buy now pay later. It's been funding a lot of the the the the racier forms of of household debt that's been tapped in recent years. And to the extent that these are connected back straight into the conventional banking system through non-depository financial institution lending, I I think it's important that we not just shrug away any potential for this to be uh systemic because again there is a conduit. There's a conduit. There's a connection between what's going on with the non-banks and what's going on with the conventional banks. >> But by the way, I see you're a speaker at the uh Bitcoin Las Vegas conference. It's the world's largest Bitcoin conference coming up. Um, are you still attending? And if so, tell us about um, uh, what you're going to be speaking about. >> Well, I'll be speaking about what the two of us are speaking about because the whole world wants to know what's happening with the Federal Reserve and monetary policy and interest rates and the macro economy going forward. I'll be speaking about all the things in my wheelhouse. And as we know, you know, that's a month away. Anything could change between now and then. >> Absolutely. Okay. Well, we look forward to that. And, uh, thank you so much for coming to the show. We'll put the link down to Qi Research in the description. So, please follow Danielle and Qi Research down there. Thank you so much once again, Danielle. Good to see you and we'll see you soon. >> Likewise. Look, look forward to seeing you in person. Thank you. >> Yeah. Thank you. And thank you for watching. Don't forget to like and subscribe.