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cover of episode January Fed Meeting Breakdown | Jack Farley & Max Wiethe on Powell, Banks, and China's AI Race

January Fed Meeting Breakdown | Jack Farley & Max Wiethe on Powell, Banks, and China's AI Race

2025/1/29
logo of podcast Monetary Matters with Jack Farley

Monetary Matters with Jack Farley

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Jack Farley
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Max Wiethe
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Jack Farley: 我认为,与周一英伟达股价暴跌17%相比,此次美联储会议的影响相对较小。市场关注点已经转向人工智能领域,特别是中国推出的DeepSeek模型,其成本远低于预期,这可能意味着人工智能领域的资本支出将减少。美联储声明最初被解读为鹰派,但鲍威尔随后澄清只是措辞问题。债券市场暗示美联储3月份不太可能降息。即将公布的PCE数据可能与预期相符,但并不意味着通胀问题已解决。房租等住房成本下降是积极信号,但通胀仍需进一步下降。DeepSeek模型的出现可能对人工智能领域的资本支出构成负面影响,但对销售最终产品的公司有利。中国人工智能领域的竞争日益激烈,DeepSeek模型的出现以及阿里巴巴的降价策略可能导致人工智能资本支出减少。英伟达将新加坡列为销售地区,可能暗示其芯片绕过对中国的禁令流向中国。我认为,银行的信贷状况和利率风险都比预期要好,银行盈利数据能够提供比宏观经济数据更深入的经济信息。查尔斯·施瓦布公司等银行的盈利数据可以反映零售交易的状况。 Max Wiethe: 美联储会议维持利率不变,市场对最初被解读为鹰派言论的反应较为温和。鲍威尔对政治因素对货币政策的影响保持谨慎态度,不愿公开回应相关问题。经济预测中的不确定性很高,特朗普的政策(例如关税)可能对通胀和利率产生重大影响,但美联储对此保持沉默。特朗普的政策存在导致滞胀的风险。减少移民可能降低失业率,但也会减少就业增长。长期债券收益率上升主要是因为期限溢价上升,而不是对利率预期的变化。美联储退出绿色金融倡议以及取消多元化、公平和包容性政策可能与政治因素有关。我将与Joseph Wang讨论美联储会议、市场以及新政府的经济政策。

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Chapters
The January Fed meeting saw no change in interest rates, and the market's reaction was muted compared to the significant drop in NVIDIA's stock and the launch of China's DeepSeek AI model. Analysts discuss the initial hawkish interpretation of the Fed statement, its later clarification, and the resulting impact on bond yields.
  • No change in policy rate at the January Fed meeting.
  • Market initially reacted negatively, then recovered.
  • Comparison to the significant drop in NVIDIA's stock and the launch of China's DeepSeek AI model.
  • Analysis of the Fed statement and Powell's press conference.
  • Impact on bond yields (10-year and 2-year treasury yields)

Shownotes Transcript

Translations:
中文

The ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me, it will be enough. Thank you. Let's close this door. Got a special episode today. Very happy to be joined by my friend and business partner, Max Wheat, the host of the Other People's Money podcast. Max, great to see you. How are you doing?

Doing well, Jack. Always fun to be here on Fed Day. We had the meeting today, no change in the policy rate, but we did have a fun Powell presser. It seems like the market has mostly shrugged off what was kind of initially interpreted as hawkish statements. Some of the things that were removed from the report, actually, he clarified in the meeting. We're just cleaning up some of the language.

And so the market initially sold off, rates had sold off, and we're kind of back where we started the day. What was your interpretation of today's Fed meeting?

Max, my first impression is that by far, this is the least dramatic day of the week so far on Wednesday. Normally, the Federal Reserve meeting is everyone pays attention to it. It's what's moving markets. This is a nothing burger compared to Monday's sell-off, what, a 17% decline in NVIDIA. China launched the DeepSeek model that beat OpenAI and many of the other models.

And they don't need, by the way, to spend all this money. Allegedly, they only spent $6 million, even though they probably spent way more, but they're not spending the trillion dollars. Max, over the weekend, I watched Larry Fink and some other investor at Davos talking about how we're going to need to invest trillions of dollars in the data centers and AI and NVIDIA and then, you know,

China launches something that it did not cost a trillion dollars. So there is deflation coming out of China. And maybe we don't need to spend all of this money. That is what drove the market earlier. I think that actually Powell was asked about that by Courtney Bowen or Courtney Brown.

a very good young reporter. And he said that we are paying attention to it and that the Federal Reserve is watching the stock market, even though it is mostly concentrated in AI and NVIDIA. As regards to meeting, I really...

thought that the statement which came out at two was quite hawkish. Let's see, it did not have the statement that there would have been more progress on inflation. So that is saying there's no progress on inflation. So therefore, why cut rates at all? And it also, it said that the unemployment rate had stabilized. So if the unemployment has stabilized and the labor market is stabilized, there's no need to cut rates. So on both sides of the mandate, they basically, I took it as a hint

an inclination that they were not going to cut rates and therefore hawkish. The great Colby Smith, formerly of the Financial Times, now a correspondent for the New York Times, and congratulations, Colby, on that, by the way, she asked Powell to clarify that statement. And he, I'm actually really glad she did, because he said, that was just a wording thing. We've been meaning to do that for a while, so we didn't

It was not meant to send a signal. So I initially tweeted that this statement seems pretty hawkish to me. Upon Powell's answer to Colby, I retracted my statement. I said, I take it back. So I think it was extreme. I took it as a very hawkish statement. I think Powell's

verbiage afterwards, maybe modestly on the hawkish side, but pretty neutral to me. And I think that the bond market kind of and I are in alignment. The 10-year spiked from 4.54% all the way up to 4.59%. Now it's back where it was before the statement was released at 2 p.m. The two-year went up a little bit more, 4.21% to 4.25%.

And it also retraced this movement, but not all of it. So the two-year is up about one to two basis points, while the 10-year is completely flat. Yep.

with the volatility in the middle. So I'd say there was a modest flattening of the yield curve for the twos tens, two year to the 10 year. But when it comes to the ultra, ultra short end part of the curve, let's say the first part, I actually think there was a very, very modest steepening because Powell hinted that there's going to be no cut in March.

If Powell heard me say that, he'd say, this guy, Jack, he doesn't know what he's... I didn't hit anything. But he said that I'm in no rush, the Fed Reserve is in no hurry, and that many on the FOMC are also in no hurry. And what can I do but interpret that as a clue that March is a little less likely? And that's what the market said. So I think, let's see, starting at before the meeting, the odds of no cut in March were 70%.

And they changed to 80%. So in March, the bond market is pricing a rather unlikely chance that the Federal Reserve will cut. So probably looking like no cut in March, according to the bond market. In December, it didn't change by as much. What about the data that's coming between now and March? Obviously, as the Fed likes to say, they're going to be reactive to the incoming data. What do we have coming out? I know we have inflation data actually coming out at the end of the week, which will tell us a little bit about the progress.

A lot of people asked, like, do you need to see progress that is in line with your current expectations? Do you need to see progress that is better than your current expectations? Artfully dodged by Powell, but we will get some information there. What are you looking forward to see from that inflation data and some of the other data points coming out between now and March?

Yeah, the PCA data comes out on Friday. That is the inflation metric that is the Fed's official gauge that is in their target. But it seems a little absurdly late to me. January 31st is when you report December data. But hey, you know, delays, I guess. Tim Rowe said that the average economist forecast is 17 basis points for 2021.

Poor PCE. But that annualizes about 2%. So it's looking like it will be in line. And the December CPI data was good, i.e. low inflation. So the PCE is probably going to be good as well. But it doesn't mean that the war is won. Non-farm payroll data that January will be released in early February. I think that's in nine days, February 7th or something like that.

And that will include the adjustments from the new census data. So the recessionistas who've been singing the recessionista song about how the job market is actually a lot weaker than the official numbers. And to be fair, Max, they have been singing that song for a long time. The tune is getting caught in people's heads. People want to hear a different song. That, I think, will be their opportunity.

to see some pretty brutal adjustments. I hope they're wrong, but we'll see. I want to drill down on one specific data point before we move on to AI, which is OER and housing services coming down. The Fed has previously said that this is where the biggest gap is between them achieving their mandates. What are you seeing there? Powell said that owner equivalent rent and housing services are coming down steadily. And those were some of the stickiest parts of the inflation index. So

So that's a good sign. He also says that non-market services are such as, for example, financial advice. The stock market's up, so fees go up, but that's not a true measure of inflation. So he says you can look through that. So I think that was a dovish note in a overall neutral to hawkish tone. He says...

Before, they say, we want to see further progress in inflation. They saw that inflation, excuse me, they saw that further progress. Now they're saying, we want to see further, further progress. So it's a war game. Basically, the Federal Reserve is saying, we're in no hurry to cut and we want to see more progress on inflation. Inflation has got to be lower. Jack, let's turn to really what is the biggest thing moving markets right now, which is deep seek and the sort of reassessment of where AI is headed and what that means.

It's four o'clock now. The market has closed. After hours, we're going to get meta results. I don't remember whether Zuckerberg is on the meta earnings calls or not, but he might move markets more than Powell will today. What do you think about what we're expecting to hear? It's not going to be too surprising for them to defend the big spend that they've made and say that they're discounting this out of deep seek.

No idea about meta, but Max, I'll say basically deep seek my interpretation. Again, I like very, very many other compundants. You know, I'm not an AI expert. And so I, so I don't really know, but I think that what came out of China is bad for deep

beneficiaries of artificial intelligence capital expenditures. So that's Nvidia, that's connectivity names, that's the electricity companies that are supposedly going to sell all of this trillions and trillions of dollars worth of energy to the all-consuming AI data centers. But I think it is actually good for AI companies that are selling the end product

such as Microsoft, such as maybe Oracle, such as Meta, such as Google, such as, you know, if Adobe is going to have some amazing product,

Instead of having to spend $10 billion, now they have to spend $6 billion. Oh, and by the way, this is old news from, I think, November, but Alibaba's cloud, they cut prices by 97%. So the deflation from China ranges, it could be only moderate deflation, which would already prick the bubble in AI CapEx, or extreme, extreme deflation of, we don't really need to build anything. Now, I think that it is possible that

DeepSeq actually used way more chips, way more than the $6 million. DeepSeq is an AI company spun out of a hedge fund. And there's also theories that the hedge fund basically wanted to tank the price of NVIDIA. And so it bought puts and then it said, oh, we only spent $6 million on chips. And therefore, that's why NVIDIA is causing NVIDIA to crash on Monday down 17%. Over half a trillion dollars of market cap lost in a single day, biggest ever by far.

So that normally that level of conspiracy theory is a bit too far for me, but I actually think that is plausible. I really, I really don't know. Alibaba, by the way, yesterday, so on Tuesday, announced that it had

It has its own model, I think, Quen, that defeated and is better than a deep seek, an old deep seek version, which is called D3 or version three. The new one is R1, so it's still not as good as R1. So Alibaba is a publicly traded company. And by the way, I think yesterday was a Chinese holiday, so it's quite rare that they announced business news on that day. So

The AI race is definitely heating up. I think it is good for... It basically has become more... AI is more efficient. We don't need as much of the CapEx. That's really bad for the CapEx companies. The picks and shovels, we don't... To dig all this gold, this AI gold under the ground, we don't need as many picks and shovels. It's bad for the picks and shovels company, but ultimately, it could mean that there's more gold under the ground. Yeah, and to indulge maybe conspiracies a little bit, there are some people that highlighted recently that NVIDIA, which breaks out where it's selling chips...

took out of the other category, put Singapore had reached large enough. So, you know, there's a lot of talk, especially with tariffs, that part of the reason like that Trump is considering putting tariffs on trade partners like Mexico and Canada is because countries like China that he's much more focused on getting them to play fair are using tariffs.

you know, other supply chain routes to get their products into the United States. The same thing can be said going the other way that you could sell chips to Singapore and then those chips could find their way to China. So there are definitely some people commenting on that move by NVIDIA to break out Singapore as one of the areas. Yeah. And again, with the huge caveat that I'm not an expert in this, I know that

previous President Joe Biden had put in somewhat stern restrictions on sales of highly, highly advanced, the top of the line chips to China.

But I think we now learn that those bans were not being followed. And, okay, they didn't buy them from the U.S. Nvidia sold them to Singapore and China got them from Singapore. So there was a, I believe President Trump today said that he's going to basically start enforcing these or ratchet those up so that China is going to limit

It's purchases of the most advanced chips, which is mostly NVIDIA. So NVIDIA down, what, a further 4% today before the Fed meeting. That was down 5%. That just goes to show this is more important than the Federal Reserve. So Max, I think we may have to rebrand Monetary Matters to a Chinese AI show. China AI Matters. Because that is what's driving markets. Yes, that is what's driving markets. But I do want to go back to the FOMC a little bit.

One of the things that we didn't really discuss and Powell was extremely reticent to discuss was the political nature of politics.

of monetary policy increasingly under the Trump administration and not just monetary policy, but other policies like tariffs, fiscal policy, and the way that they might affect the Fed's outlook. He got questions about whether it had been factored into models, got questions about what authority executive orders had potentially over the Fed. And he artfully dodged all of those questions. I mean, it's clear that is top of mind for journalists. It's top of mind for the market, which is why he got all of these questions.

But he is not willing to really step one foot on either side of the line. How important do you think it is? And then do you think we will ever get clarity from Powell and from the Fed on how they're thinking about these things?

I think so. The last December Fed meeting, they had a summary of economic projections, which contains not just their famous dot plot of interest rates, but also their forecast for unemployment, inflation, 2025, 2026, 2027, as well as the uncertainty bands. And in December, economic projections, the

uncertainty was unusually high. And as Powell made the point today, there's always uncertainty in financial markets, but the level of uncertainty changes. And so I think uncertainty is unusually high. The reality is, it's possible President Trump, he's going to raise tariffs to levels that we haven't seen in 110 years, like to 1912. And he's a big fan of...

Former President McKinley, he's called McKinley the god of tariffs and he's, excuse me, the king of tariffs. And he says that he wants, maybe I'm even stronger on tariffs than McKinley. He renamed Mount Denali back to Mount McKinley. So he's definitely, he's a big, everyone knows this. Trump is a big fan of tariffs. The new, newly confirmed Treasury Secretary, Scott Besant, is...

With Trump, he does not think that tariffs are going to be inflationary. And so it is a huge question mark, and it could definitely stoke inflation. And I think that that would raise the neutral rate of interest. And that would like... Okay, so here's something I don't understand, Max. I think if tariffs are inflationary, then that means that

interest rates should be higher because, okay, if without tariffs, inflation is going to go back to 2%. With tariffs, they're going to go 3% or even let's say even 4%. Obviously, you should be slower to cut interest rates. But a lot of people I respect, most notably Joseph Wang, have talked about how actually with tariffs, tariffs slow down the economy. So actually, the Federal Reserve should cut. So this is something that I really don't know is how it's going to affect. And I think the Federal Reserve is thinking about it. And frankly, I think they

they probably don't know. And even if they do know, they're nowhere close to revealing that publicly at all. Powell totally was a stonewaller today. He got questions about, what do you think about Trump's tariffs? What do you think is tariffs and policy deportations, immigration? Is this going to change the Fed policy? He refused to answer any of it. Total stonewalling.

Yeah. So, Jack, what do they call that when growth slows or is non-existent, but we have inflation? I think there's a word for that. Stagflation. Yes.

So, I mean, that's certainly a risk with the policy. And it's something that Zandi talked about in one of your recent interviews that the Fed really doesn't know as much as everyone's trying to get answers from them on how they're going to react to these things. It is not clear because of this issue of it slows growth. But at the same time, it's largely considered to be inflationary by mainstream economists, which there's no doubt that the majority of the economists at the Fed take a mainstream view on the effect that tariffs are likely to have.

Now, what about some of the other questions you mentioned, deportations and what that might how that might affect the labor market? We didn't get an answer from Powell on that, but you did talk to Zandi about it. What what is your view on, you know, the the deportation question?

Powell did address it today. He said that basically with deportations and also reduced immigration, which he said you were already seeing, that the break even rate of the number of jobs that are needed in order to keep the unemployment rate flat, because if you add zero jobs and people keep on coming into this country, the unemployment rate is going to rise, that you actually need fewer jobs to keep the unemployment rate high. So he, excuse me, keeps the unemployment rate constant.

So I think it could actually reduce the unemployment rate, possibly, I guess. I reduced the unemployment rate, and he didn't say this, but my interpretation is also reduce the job gains. And I mean, that is what we've seen in the data, ridiculously strong job numbers, NF non-farm payrolls, but a rising unemployment rate. And the fact that we have a lot of immigration...

And the unemployment rate is higher for immigrants would support that. Sounds like a new song for the recessionistas to sing about why we haven't seen, you know, the economic pain that they have. Max, that album never ends. Yes, never ends. Always, always more.

So Jack, are there any other topics today from that Fed meeting that you want to get into? Well, Powell was asked about long-term mortgage rates going up. And obviously that's very related to the 10-year. He said that long rates going up is mostly a term premium story, not rate expectations. And that's something Mark Zandi talked about. Mark has got

It's got a great chart we can flash up on the screen, basically showing the reason long ends have gone up is not because people are saying, oh, inflation is going to be so much higher in the future, or growth is going to be so much higher in the future, and therefore the Federal Reserve's interest rate in 2021.

35 is going to be so much higher. That rate hasn't changed a bunch. It's just that their investors are demanding a much higher term premium, a much higher additional yield in order to carry that duration risk. And that term premium has a lot to do with supply and demand. You have

Maybe the new Treasury administration will issue a lot more longer-term bonds. Treasury Secretary Scott Besson, before he was in the role or nominated, was quite a stern critic of the previous Yellen Treasury for issuing short-term bills. So

Maybe he will issue longer term bonds, and therefore that could widen the term premium further. I wouldn't want to cause panic, though. The term premium, although it has widened a bunch in the past 18 months, let's say, shout out people who've been predicting that, such as Andy Constan, it is still way lower than any time in the 1990s and most of the 2000s, 2006, I'll say. So term premium is nowhere near high, and it could widen 200 basis points and not be out of control forever.

at all. So he said it's mostly a term premium story. He was asked about two social issues, which were very rarely talked about at the Federal Reserve. Number one, DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion, and then also NGFS, the Network for Greening the Financial System. Basically, the Federal Reserve removed itself from the NGFS. So they were part of a coalition of central banks and financial firms

talking about how to green the economy. And Powell said, we were part of that because we wanted to learn about what other central banks were doing. But we concluded that ultimately, we're the Federal Reserve and our mandate is focused on stable prices and low unemployment, the dual mandate. And green energy and making sure that oil is not really funded and that we have wind and solar is not a priority. That's not what we do.

It just so happens that the Federal Reserve withdrew from the NGFS three days before Trump's inauguration on January 17th. And Powell acknowledged that he thinks it may look like it was political, but that's just how Powell said it was a coincidence. And then the Federal Reserve also said,

So I think, I believe it was the New York Fed that canceled its DEI policy. So the DEI, you know, newyorkfed.com slash DEI or whatever the link is, like no longer is an active page. And, you know, of course there's a Trump executive order basically banning diversity, equity and inclusion policy, focusing on merits. And Powell said that we try and comply with- Align. Yeah. Align.

Align, not comply. Yes. We try and align ourselves with executive orders to the extent that they are also in compliance with the law. And I think there he was hinting at in Dodd-Frank, bank and financial regulation after the great financial crisis, they talked about having a diverse workforce. So you kind of have this line in Dodd-Frank about diversity versus the much more recent Trump executive order banning DEI. So these two things are reaching our conflict. Yeah.

Well, and who knows how long they will be in conflict. I know this is going back a little bit, but you did speak with Jason Cave, who talked a lot about why he thinks this administration is going to be, you know, kind of let the banks free. So who knows if we are going to get some legislation and that there will be push from both the legislative branch and the executive branch to sort of update Dodd-Frank.

That's a good point. Well, let's move on to where we talk a little bit about what is coming up on the Monetary Matters Network. I know tomorrow you speak with somebody who is well versus the Fed. We're going to get some new opinions on what we heard about today. Joseph Wang, what are you expecting to talk about with Joseph?

It's been way too long. I'm really glad Joseph is coming on. I'm going to get Joseph's takes on the Fed meeting today, his views on the stock and bond market, as well as the new administration. You know, I spoke with Mark Zandi, who I think is, it's fair to say, not a supporter of

a lot of Trump's economic policies. I think Joseph comes at it from a little bit of a different angle and Joseph thinks that tariffs can be a good idea and that although they could have short-term consequences, that this is what Trump got elected and he has a mandate. So I'm excited to hear Joseph's thoughts on that. And then I also, I've already interviewed this guy, but Brad Winchler,

a fund manager who invests exclusively in financials and banks. And he is absolutely crushed in the market with his fund. And so he's a bank god as far as I'm concerned. And so we talk about bank earnings so far, what he's noticed. And we don't talk about JP Morgan or Goldman Sachs. We talk about very small banks, community banks and regional banks. So if you are a true bank nerd,

And you're going to love that episode. So that will air either this weekend or next week. But Max, you've got an episode coming out on Other People's Money, your show. Tell us about your interview with Russell Clarke.

Yeah. So Russell Clark's recently been writing a sub stack. He was a hedge fund manager until 2021. He gave back the money he was managing after some years of tough performance. And he's always been known as somebody who's got a little bit of short bias. And he's considering actually relaunching and thinking about

sort of flipping the long-short model on its head. So we're going to talk about long-short. We actually get a lot more into the market dynamics because he has always believed that for short-selling funds that are not activist short-sellers, that it's much more important to be focused on a particular event, a particular risk in the market to actually go out and raise capital. So the show is really more about building a fund management business

And oftentimes fund managers are trying to pitch themselves as having the strategy that it's going to work in every market environment and it's going to have this sort of evergreen nature to it. And Russell comes at it from, you know, I'm really trying to solve a particular market problem based off of how portfolios are overweight. Certain assets are exposed to certain risks that they really need to think more about. So it's a different interview than I normally do. And I'm excited to to get that out. And that'll air tomorrow.

But Jack, you did talk about Rinschler and banks, and I want to bring it back to sort of what we're doing here today, which is us chatting and going through some important market topics. We almost did this last Friday, but you just had so many interviews and you wanted to get them out before the Fed meeting. But you really wanted to talk about bank earnings. And I think this might be a good time for us to do sort of a mini version of that.

and why you love to talk about bank earnings and what you look for with bank earnings. And maybe for that Rinchler interview, it'll give people a lens to view them.

What I said, Max, the bank nerds are going to love this interview. Truth be told, I am a bank nerd. And I think it's really important because you get to learn stuff about the economy that you just don't get to see if you're only looking at the macroeconomic data. I spoke with David Steinberg, who used to work for Scott Besson and George Soros. And he said, he always talked about the micro informs the macro. If you're looking at a bank that's microeconomic, but you're really going to get

get a great picture of the macro. In, let's say, Q2 2020, everyone was talking about economies going to enter a recession, excuse me, a depression, and it's going to be horrible. But actually, if you looked at bank earnings, you could have seen that the amount of money in the financial system was insane. And credit card delinquencies, their brief spike in March, actually, were going down. People were paying their loans. And I wish that I

Maybe have some of the skills that I have now of analytics and financials. Maybe I could have been able to foresee that. But at the time, it was kind of a learning experience. I'll just say for example, I'd say the bank earnings so far has been quite solid. I think that when it comes to delinquencies and defaults, stuff has really...

not materialized in lots of fearful sectors such as commercial real estate. I mean, Max, I've been interviewing people about the doom in the commercial real estate sector for over three years now. And Bank of the Ozarks, now called Bank OZK, one of the largest commercial real estate lenders, maybe not an overall volume, but in percentage, they are a CRE bank and they do

construction loans as well, their loan loss reserves and their provisions and their delinquencies are fairly up to maybe even down. So it's just lower than 2019 levels. So it's like, yeah, you can read the doom's porn about commercial real estate, or you can actually look at commercial real estate banks and see what they're doing.

That is not to say a lot of banks have a lot of problems. New York Community Bank, now known as Flagstar, they made a lot of commercial real estate loans in New York City, and those loans are having a lot of issues. Why? Because of the commercial real estate doom narrative? No. Because of rent control in New York City, and basically landlords' interest expense has gone up way more than they're able to raise the rent. So that is a somewhat idiosyncratic issue.

Now, there is some CRE issues. And look, it could be that 2025 is the CRE loan collapse in the same way probably people have been talking about. I guess what? Michael Burry started talking about short-week subcrime in 2005, and he probably was talking shit on it in 2004. Yeah, it took four years, and ultimately, he was right. So I guess that could happen, but not my base case. When it comes to customer loans,

credit cards and delinquencies, those have been surging

But they bottomed in late 2021, early 2022, absurdly low levels because, again, we kind of had a lone jubilee kind of in 2020, 2021. So they've been surging from very, very low levels. And if they had continued to surge, we would have a lot of problems. But actually, the delinquencies have kind of peaked because banks have just stopped lending and cut people off. So that's bad for the economy. But overall, in terms of delinquencies and bank health, like Capital One,

which is kind of a mid lender in terms of like credit quality. Their delinquencies year over year is down, I believe only one basis point, but they're no longer going up like 80 basis points year over year. Again, you got to look at it year over year because there's a lot of seasonality in the quarters. Syncreti Financial, they reported today. And to be honest, Max, I'm literally just looking at it now, but their 30 day delinquencies is actually

down four basis points year over year. And allowance for credit losses is also down roughly 30 basis points year over year. Now, the charge-off rate continues to go up, but the allowance is going down. So I think it's kind of looking like the consumer cycle basically is over. It's a benign consumer cycle that

we may be at the beginning of a new credit cycle and delinquency rates will be going down. Bank lending will... Excuse me. Consumer lending is like the growth of it is going down now, but it will eventually bottom. So I think to say my read on the banks is overall, they're doing pretty good on credit. They're doing much better on credit than has been priced in. It has been priced in

extreme bearish, extreme recession that had been priced in and that's being priced out. So on an absolute basis, it's good. But on a relative basis, relative to expectations, I would say it's great. And then on the interest expense side, basically, there's the credit side, credit risk and interest rate risk. Silicon Valley Bank, First Republic Bank, they all fail because of interest rate risk, not credit risk. That I think is also looking a lot better too. You're seeing some interest expense going

going down actually at banks. Banks are paying less now than they were before the Federal Reserve cut interest rates. They still have a lot of 2% agency mortgage-backed securities that no one's ever going to move out of for 30 years, but it's looking a little bit better there. Robert Leonard :

If so, what I'm saying, Max, if the financials and banks hadn't moved over the past year, it would be good. But all I'll say is the banks have been rallying like crazy. So I'm not the only one who knows this. Yeah, certainly. Yeah. I mean, I think it's funny that some of the banks you mentioned, like Capital One, are not what people think of it as a credit card company. One of the banks you like to look at is Charles Schwab. And obviously, they're very important for

They're sort of like retail trading. So you can kind of get a look through into how people are doing in their brokerage accounts from looking at Schwab. And they give you pictures into these sorts of microclimates. So I'm excited to hear what Brad Rinchler has to say about the banks and some of those other interviews that I know you will continue to put out on the banking sector. Yeah, Max, it's just on Brad.

I think there were five banks that were public banks that failed in 2025. I'll see if I can name them. Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, First Republic, Republic First, and Silvergate, I think. Although I think that maybe, yeah, maybe failed in 2022, late 2022. Brad Renshler was short all five of them. All right. Certainly a man with his finger on the pulse. Yeah, he's got his finger on the pulse. He's the real deal. All right. Well, Jack, thank you so much. It's been a lot of fun.

Thanks, Max. People can find you on Twitter at Max Wheatley. I, of course, am at JackFarley96. Your podcast is Other People's Money, which appears on my feed. And people can find my show, Monetary Matters, not just on YouTube, but on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. By the way, I talked about Silicon Valley Bank. I am going to be interviewing the former CEO of Silicon Valley Bank. So that could air probably about next week. So that is going to be very exciting as well. Until next time, Max, talk soon.

Thank you. Just close this f***ing door.