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cover of episode S&P 500 to 15,000? | Mel Mattison on Bretton Woods 2.0, Revaluation of Gold, and Why He Expects A Violent Stock Market Correction In Early 2025

S&P 500 to 15,000? | Mel Mattison on Bretton Woods 2.0, Revaluation of Gold, and Why He Expects A Violent Stock Market Correction In Early 2025

2025/1/9
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Monetary Matters with Jack Farley

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Mel Mattison: 我预测2025年股市将经历剧烈波动,可能出现10%-30%的回调,但最终将在年底达到7000点。这主要基于以下几个因素:首先,我仍然看好美国政府持续的巨额赤字支出对股市上涨的推动作用,直到接近2027-2028年的退休金悬崖期。其次,我预计社会保障问题将比预期更早地影响市场,导致市场提前出现大幅回调。再次,我认为市场对通货膨胀的担忧被夸大了,而债券市场表明通货膨胀率和实际GDP增长率可能都在2%以上。最后,我认为斯科特·贝森特担任财政部长,以及特朗普政府的政策,可能导致市场回调,从而促使政府采取重大经济改革。 至于回调的原因,我认为这与政府的财政赤字问题和社会保障问题有关。政府需要解决这些问题,但这些问题的解决可能会导致市场短期内出现波动。此外,市场对通货膨胀的担忧以及特朗普政府的政策也可能导致市场回调。 然而,我相信市场最终会反弹,并在2025年底达到7000点。这主要是因为我相信特朗普政府的政策最终将推动经济增长,从而提振股市。 此外,我还认为,在2025年上半年,市场可能出现一次更大幅度的回调,甚至可能达到20%-30%。这将是由于市场对特朗普政府政策的担忧以及潜在的负面新闻造成的。然而,我相信这次回调将是短暂的,市场将迅速反弹。 Jack Farley: 我主要关注的是Mel对市场未来走势的预测,以及他如何将这些预测与社会保障等长期问题联系起来。我质疑了Mel对共和党政策和社会保障的看法,并探讨了市场可能持续上涨而Mel的现金策略失效的风险。我还就Mel对Russell 2000指数和新兴市场的看法,以及他关于‘布雷顿森林体系2.0’和货币重置的观点进行了提问。

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Key Insights

Why does Mel Mattison expect a violent stock market correction in early 2025?

Mel Mattison anticipates a violent correction due to the unsustainable debt and deficit situation in the U.S., combined with potential policy changes under the new administration. He believes the market will react sharply to the realization of these fiscal challenges, leading to a 10-30% decline in the S&P 500.

What are the key drivers behind Mel Mattison's bullish outlook for the S&P 500?

Mattison cites the AI boom, the wealth effect from COVID-induced asset price inflation, and the fiscal impulse from massive deficit spending as key drivers. He also highlights the impact of higher interest rates on money markets, which have provided incremental spending power.

What is the significance of Bretton Woods 2.0 in Mel Mattison's forecast?

Bretton Woods 2.0 represents a potential global monetary reset to address the unsustainable sovereign debt bubble. Mattison believes this reset could involve coordinated efforts to control yields, reduce debt-to-GDP ratios, and introduce a new reserve asset system, which could stabilize and then propel markets higher.

What role does gold play in Mel Mattison's monetary reset theory?

Gold is seen as a potential neutral reserve asset in the proposed monetary reset. Mattison suggests that revaluing gold could help devalue the dollar against it, providing a release valve for global debt issues. He also notes that central banks have been increasing their gold reserves, signaling a shift away from the dollar as the primary reserve asset.

Why does Mel Mattison believe the S&P 500 could reach 15,000 by 2028?

Mattison’s 15,000 S&P 500 target is based on a combination of pro-growth policies, controlled inflation, and structural changes in the global monetary system. He expects real earnings growth and inflationary pressures to drive nominal earnings higher, leading to a significant market rally.

What are the potential risks to Mel Mattison's forecast of a market correction?

The primary risk is that the market continues to rise without a significant correction, leaving investors with cash on the sidelines. Additionally, unexpected policy changes or geopolitical events could disrupt the anticipated trajectory of the market.

How does Mel Mattison view Bitcoin in the context of a monetary reset?

Mattison sees Bitcoin as a potential, though unlikely, part of a new reserve asset system. While he acknowledges its growing acceptance as a store of value, he believes it is more probable that gold and other traditional assets will play a larger role in any monetary reset.

What is Mel Mattison's outlook for the U.S. dollar in a global monetary reset?

Mattison expects the U.S. dollar to remain a core reserve currency but not the primary reserve asset. He foresees a move toward a more neutral reserve asset system, potentially involving a basket of currencies, gold, and other assets, to reduce reliance on the dollar.

What could trigger a rapid market decline in 2025 according to Mel Mattison?

A rapid decline could be triggered by policy announcements from the new administration, such as mass deportations or tariffs, which could create market uncertainty. Additionally, concerns over inflation and debt sustainability could lead to a sharp sell-off.

How does Mel Mattison plan to navigate the volatile market in 2025?

Mattison is raising cash, buying put options, and using call options to limit downside risk while maintaining some exposure to potential upside moves. He plans to redeploy cash into the market during any significant corrections, focusing on small-cap and equal-weight S&P 500 ETFs.

Chapters
Mel Mattison, a monetary theorist and former fintech executive, accurately predicted the S&P 500 reaching 6,000 by the end of 2024. This discussion explores the factors behind his bullish outlook, including the AI boom, lingering effects of COVID, and increased interest rates.
  • Accurate prediction of S&P 500 reaching 6000 by year-end 2024
  • Factors contributing to bullish outlook: AI boom, wealth effect from COVID, increased interest rates on debt and massive deficit spending

Shownotes Transcript

Translations:
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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. I'm very pleased today to be joined by Mel Madison, investor, former fintech executive, and monetary theorist, author of the financial thriller, Quaz. Mel, great to see you. Welcome to Monetary Matters. Great to be here, Jack. Thank you. Mel, we did an interview on my old show, Forward Guidance,

The title of which was, Asset Bubble Crescendo Until 2027 Collapse When U.S. Treasury Market Implodes, argues Mel Madison. So I think you have been, over the past year, forecasting that the S&P would get to 6,000 by the end of year 2024, which we are now at, and 7,000 by the end of 2025. And the former prediction happened. We went...

higher than 6,000 on the S&P as recorded at the end of 2024, it's actually a little bit below. But so I guess that is a prediction that played out and played out well, because one of the highest returns year for the S&P 500 in history, I think close to the top 10 going back 100 years,

So what fueled your extreme bullishness on the stock market and what is fueling your, I suppose, continued bullishness on the US stock market going into 2025? Yeah, sure. So basically this was back, I think it was around March, and there was beginning to be a little bit of fears about the labor market and some different doubt creeping into the markets. And I just didn't see it. I was looking at jobless claims.

Three big drivers for me last year, or I guess still technically this year in 2024, were just the AI boom. I felt there's still a lot of wealth effect in place from COVID with asset price inflation.

And then I also thought, and this was kind of underestimated, I think, that the interest on the debt, the fact that people were for the first time in years getting four or 5% in money markets or able to put their money into a high yield savings account was going to add that incremental dollar and that we were pretty much pushing ourselves forward. Of course, the other main factor I mentioned at the time was the fiscal impulse and these massive deficit spendings.

So I felt at the time, and I do more or less feel the same way now, although there are some evolution in my thinking. But my thought process of why I said 6,000 2024 end of year, 7,000 2025 was really that I didn't see anything that was going to stop this massive deficit spending, that the government was on this path, that they were realizing that if they break too hard away from it,

That's going to impact the economy. It's then going to spiral into impacting the stock market. That's going to impact tax receipts because 2022, we basically did a half a trillion less in tax receipts in 2023 because of the stock market. So I felt that the only thing that was going to kind of stop the train, if you will, was when we approached the entitlement cliff near the end of this upcoming administration, like 2027, 2028 timeframe.

I do think that certain things might have accelerated that and that we might be in for an earlier addressing of it. So an earlier sharp sell off, not quite as sharp as I was anticipating if we waited until 2028. And then another quick recovery when the issue at hand, which is really this out of control debt deficit issue that I focus on a lot,

gets resolved. And so that's really where I'm sitting at right now. I'm still bullish on 2025 for a 12 month price target, but I think the road to get there is going to be extremely bumpy. Volatility is not going to be hovering around 15 all the time in 2025. We're going to have big moves up, big moves down. And I think we're going to have at least one, if not multiple big sell-offs. And by that, I mean 10 to 30% down.

So 10 to 30%, 30% is big. I think the decline in the S&P peak to trough in 2022, I don't have the exact numbers, but I think it was maybe upper 25 upwards of that. And that was over the course of maybe 10 months. So if you are still forecasting S&P 7,000 by the end of year 2025, you must be forecasting a 10 to 30% decline in a very short period of time horizon. So the bigger the move and the shorter the move, i.e. the long,

the faster it happens, that would be very, very dramatic. So what could cause such a big decline in the market in such a rapid period of time, a short period of time? And then why are you still forecasting such a high level on the S&P 500?

7,000. And let's say if we have, I'm not very good at math, but so that's a 50% up move. So you 30%, you're 20% down over the first three months. And then a 50% move up move from there. That's a, it's pretty, pretty dramatic year. Why are you forecasting this as well as how are you tying that to social security, which is on the total opposite of the spectrum? It is a very, very slow moving issue. There's a reason why I said 10 to 30, because I'm not yet that the conviction is beginning to grow for this thesis. I'm

Last year, I was extremely confident. And barring some really unforeseen circumstance, I'm like, this S&P is going to keep chugging. I felt very confident about that. This year, I started really shaping this thesis about a month ago. So it was, I think, the first time I publicly came out and said, raise some cash. I'm getting a little worried. It was about two weeks ago, around a December 15th timeframe.

And more recently, last week, I started actually buying TLT calls, calling for a countertrend rally in the 10-year. Yields down, prices up. And so here's the way I see this playing out. And let's remember in August,

It was a 9.7% peak to decline. So we didn't have a 10% correction this year. We had a 9.7% if you're looking at intraday numbers on the SPX around August with that yen carry trade thing. So when it went down so quick, it did bounce back. You're right. Most of the time when you see the very quick decline, you then get the V-shape. And that is what I'm anticipating.

And I think that while a 10%, I feel very, very high conviction of my convictions beginning to growing that to grow, that we're, that we could see something more significant closer to that 20 or 30% range. And I realized that's what we did in 22. We did 20 some, uh,

percent on the S&P. I believe the Q's got down about 30, maybe a little bit more. But so we're talking about that level of decline, but just a lot quicker and then a lot quicker recovery. And I think a lot of this is going to be administration driven. I think we've got a setup here where we've got a lot of focus on inflation right now and people really worried about the 10 year yield. And I think that those worries are misplaced. I think that

Number one driver of inflation, I think, long term is you got to look at the oil price. And some people are trying to draw conclusions or similarities between now and say 2007.

in 2007 we had an oil spike to 147 dollars a barrel adjusted for inflation that's like over 200 a barrel on oil we we have had a hard time getting much above 70 lately so if you if you go 200 some to 70 in in constant kind of inflation adjusted terms we've got oil sitting at a third of what it of what it was 15 years ago so i i think in inflation is

largely driven by energy and energy is contained. If anything, we have an energy surplus.

And if Trump actually can convince some of these large integrated oil companies to drill, baby, drill $50, $60 oil next year for at least some period of time, I think is in the works. And that that I just can't see a massive inflation and spike with that kind of energy movement going on. You've also got issues with China, right? We've seen the two year note, I believe, dropped below one percent, I think maybe just this week, the 10 years below two percent.

We've got growth and political issues in Europe. It's just a lot of this worry that inflation is going to reignite and shoot off to the moon, I feel is misplaced. And if you really look at the bond market and what happened, why rates have been going up since the Fed.

I think you have to think they were starting to price in, number one, a Trump victory. And number two, they were looking at growth prospects getting better. There was that worry in the summer that the labor market was starting to roll over. And so what we did was we started pricing in, if you look at the 10-year break-evens, we started pricing in about 2.25% inflation. And we started pricing in about 2.35% real GDP growth. And that gets you to 4.6%.

And that's not the bond market telling you inflation is getting ready to go haywire. And that's why we're at 4.6. That's the bond market telling you inflation might be a little bit above two over the coming years and growth is also going to be above two. And so why are we going to have a 10 year below four if we've got 2% inflation, 2% growth? It doesn't make sense. So I don't think the bond market's been screaming it. So I'll pause right there, but that's kind of a little bit of this setup.

of why I think the market is off sides. And then what we're going to do, the whole other thing is going to stumble into this administration. So that's kind of a little bit of the macro backdrop. And I can get into my administration issues and concerns. But I'll pause there and see if there's anything you wanted to follow up on. I've made notes on all those topics. But let's move on to the social security issue and Trump 2025.

Okay. So I think the social security issue and why I always came to that 2027, 28 timeframe, just quick recap is around 2020, the social security trust fund maxed out over $2 trillion. And we actually started drawing that down. And CBO estimates are around 2030, 2031, we're going to run out. But I felt that

Congress could not kind of delay until 2030 to start talking about it. That would become an issue as the 2028 presidential election campaign started ramping up. That basically we were going to have to start having that conversation. And that conversation was what was going to start freaking out markets because they were going to finally recognize like this debt deficit situation is untenable.

I think what has happened with Doge and with Trump and with a lot more just people out there talking about this, like the numbers have just gotten so astronomical that we've kind of moved it into the consciousness a little bit higher or a little bit quicker than I thought it was going to happen. And so I think it could possibly be dealt with.

this year, meaning 2025. And I want to marry that with the fact of Scott Besson as Treasury Secretary, which I think is a very interesting and a very important choice. He is someone who is very imaginative. He's also someone more than any recent probably Treasury Secretary we've had is really focused on financial history and understands economic history deeply. He actually teaches a course at Yale in it.

When he took a break from the hedge fund world, that was his kind of full-time thing. And he had said, as has been well publicized in a Manhattan Institute podcast and talk that he gave, that he expected in the next four years for there to be a monetary reset and a new Bretton Woods. And those are his words, a new Bretton Woods was likely to happen in the next four years and that he wanted to be a part of it.

And so I think there's a good chance that with Trump, with what he's promised and what he wants to do, when the reality of the fact that those things can't happen, given the current financial landscape. And by that, I mean significant deficit cuts, a smaller government and still have the economy doing well in the stock market. So he's going to have to deal with that.

And I think that a market sell-off may be the type of impetus that's required in order to get kind of political will to actually make some dramatic changes. And so I feel like what's going to happen is we're going to run into a little bit of a brick wall here between like Doge and cutting and government and also keeping the economy on track to be doing well. And as the market starts to sniff it out based on

policy announcements, whether it's mass deportations, tariffs,

and the market starts to get worried about it, it's going to create an atmosphere, which I think you need to make some dramatic changes. And while this period is going to be wild and very volatile, coming out of it is going to be an excellent buying opportunity. And again, I want to highlight this is a scenario that I'm growing in confidence with, not at an 80, 90% level like I was when I was talking about 6,000 S&P.

last time in March, but I'm starting to like tip over to the 50% level and growing. And even just last night when Trump mentioned in a true social tweet, 1929 depression, the Democrat, like he's almost starting to paint the wall, paint the picture. Like we need something big happen. And I think Besson is whispering in his ear.

So help me understand what I'm missing here, because to me, for growing up, a lot of what Republicans were talking about was cutting Social Security, and they lost election in 2008, 2012. And I think Trump, a lot of his campaign and his political philosophy is not cutting Social Security. And I feel like for a Republican, that was a radical proposition. And

to at least not talk about it. And now I feel like it's become mainstream Republican doctrine to not cut Social Security. So, I mean, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, they are going to be cutting government waste, which you and I know as a percentage of the deficit, it is not that big. The federal workforce has...

around 3 million people, which is fewer than it had in a lot of the 1980s, fewer than actually 1945, although World War II. So a lot of the growth in the government workforce has been in state and local employment, as well as sending people checks, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. And to my mind, that is not on the chopping block. Am I wrong? What have I been missing? No, you're absolutely right. And that's what I was

getting at with the Trump promises are paradoxical and contradictory and cannot occur. And I would actually suggest that we're going to have a record deficit in 2025, all time record, peacetime, non-pandemic deficit. In absolute terms or in as a percentage of GDP? In absolute terms, six to 8% of GDP deficit, 2 trillion probably.

So, I mean, there's just no way to do like Doge. In the betting markets, you can go on there and bet chances that they're going to cut $250 billion from the budget or $500 billion. I have a bet placed that they're not going to cut $250 billion.

I don't think they're going to cut anything as far as nominal terms. Do I think they're going to lay off some federal employees? Yes. But you know what? They're also been talking about giving them large severance packages when they do that. OK, that does not cut the deficit in 2025. They've talked about other departments like, oh, we're going to go after education.

You can do that to a certain extent, but if you go into the treasury, monthly treasury statements, and you look at what is the government, the Department of Education really spend their money on, it's a lot of student loan stuff that's financial in nature and difficult to just go in there on the executive side and mess with. You need legislative stuff on that. So there's a lot of stuff that they're talking about being able to do that I just don't believe they're going to be able to do. I had gone through and looked at

what I believe are like things that Trump politically just won't touch. And so when I did that, I was looking at defense spending, obviously net interest on the debt, social security, Medicare. And then I also added in VA benefits because I mean, that's not for Trump and that's a half a trillion a year. Of all the government departments over the last decade,

I did a review. The one that's grown the most on percentage terms and it makes total sense is VA, right? Because of all the veterans that are coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq and have needs.

So if he doesn't touch that, that was I think it was 82 or 87 percent of the of the budget. So so what was the defense budget of the federal of the federal budget? Eighty two percent. When you when you add all those things I just named Social Security, Medicare. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You add all of that up.

And so that leaves 18% of the federal, and that's not even including, like I said, Department of Education, like a trillion in there. I mean, like there's just no way, like this 2 trillion number that you hear out there, like

It's absolutely insane. And even Besson with his three arrows, which are, as a reminder, 3% GDP growth, I believe 3% deficit to GDP and 3 million extra barrels of oil production. And that 3 million, sorry, that 3% GDP is real GDP. Yes, real GDP.

He's talking about achieving at least on the deficit mark. I don't know about the GDP mark, but by 2028. So so he even he's not coming in there thinking, oh, yeah, we're going to cut the deficit to three percent next year. And so I think what you're going to do is you're going to have this deficit spending continue. But he's also going to want to do all of these other things. Right. He's going to want to do the tax cuts.

And this is why I think eventually the market's going to rebound hard. But what I think is going to happen is we're coming up here. I think there's a lot of stuff going on this week with end of year stuff.

tax loss harvesting, people selling out of things like TLT and bonds that they can harvest some tax losses. There's stuff in the reverse repo market. And I think in the first week of January, we might see a little bit of a mix of that, like maybe people going into more of the equal weight S&P, countertrend rally in the 10-year, as people rebalance their portfolios, pension funds, mutual funds.

insurance companies, which own 22% of U.S. treasuries privately held. I was just looking at the last quarterly treasury bill bulletin from December. It's around $6 trillion out of the 20, I think it's $29 billion of privately held treasuries are held by pension funds, mutual funds, and insurance companies. So I'm looking for a counter trend rally in the 10-year

Maybe all the way down to four percent, but definitely I'm looking to see four and a quarter in the next month or so. And we're going to have earnings and then we're going to have maybe a little honeymoon with the inauguration. And then the February, March type time frame as the pro-growth Trump policies have not yet taken effect, but yet we're getting these results.

news stories that I think the market is not going to necessarily like. I think there could be some ugly stories plastered all over the news of some grandmother getting deported or, God forbid, an ice raid goes wrong. And you could just see like a sentiment shift. And you're really seeing also beyond these kind of qualitative things I'm mentioning,

When you look at market internals, I mean, they're looking like top heavy right now, right? I mean, you had RSP, the equal weight, down eight or nine days in a row. You had the Dow down 10, 11 days in a row, like first time since 1974 or something. You had nine sectors down for the month in December. So when you look at those internals, I mean, you're just getting tired. The market's getting tired and

I think a lot of people were trying to be a little bit maybe too cute, saying, I'll just keep it through the end of the year and I'll worry about next year for tax reasons. And I think we were kind of at peak honeymoon period around mid-December when Trump went to ring the opening bell, oddly enough, on Wall Street. And he had that big press conference with, is it Satoshi Sun?

about the $100 billion investment. Myoshi-san, yeah, yeah. Myoshi-san and Satoshi-san, excuse me. Bitcoin on the brain. That's a whole nother thing to throw into the mix here. But really, I think that that was like your opportunity. And I regret personally, like I was kind of calling for this publicly in the middle of December and I started to realign my portfolio. I started to sell

long positions, raise cash and buy some puts. But I didn't do as much of it as I should have. I did it with like about 20, 25% of my portfolio. I wish I had done it more. And then last week there was, I think it was the day after Christmas, we had a little bit of a rally back to 6,000 on S&P futures. I sold some more, bought some more puts, bought some TLT calls, but I'm still looking to raise even more cash. I'm looking to basically get almost

out of like 80% of my long positions because I just feel like there's almost, I feel very confident that there's going to be an opportunity to buy the S&P 500 in the next six months, at least five, if not 10, 15, 20% lower than it is now. And possible chance of buying it much lower, 25 or 30. And what I want to be able to do is have enough cash that I can put a chunk of that to work at 10%

And if I'm wrong and it goes down to 20, I can put a chunk of it to work then. And if 10 is all we get and we go back up 5%, 10%, put another chunk of it in. And then if we break through the new highs, put another chunk of it in. So I want to have a boatload of cash that I start redeploying at 10, but I feel confident redeploying

elsewhere. And I want to redeploy it into things like IWM and RSP rather than QQQ and some of these really big tech names, which I think are really getting hit from all sides, the H-1B visa debate, the valuations of them, and a number of other different factors that I think could cause for that long-awaited broadening to occur post this

financial episode that I think is coming up sometime in the next six months. So as a trader, you're lightening your bag significantly, preparing for a 10% to 25% to 30% decline so you can want to get back in.

Mel, as an investor, how are you preparing against the risk that the S&P 500 doesn't decline at all and it continues to go up and then you have cash? And are you going to redeploy it into the market? Because, Mel, there are a lot of people who probably timed the 2007 top exactly right. They sold at the exact top. And then as the market declined 50%, they were earning less.

yields on their cash and they could buy it so much lower. The problem was they didn't buy it so much lower. And also there are people who, let's say two years ago, Mel, and there are plenty of them saying, I'm going to hold on to cash because I can buy the S&P lower and it has just gone up. And so the risk is that you never get back in. And I think there have been times where I've sold at the top and it feels great. But then if you don't get back in, you'd struggle. So you do have to go...

back in? How are you preparing about that risk as well as what are you going to do if the S&P in April is 5% higher or even 15% higher or 10% higher instead of 15% lower? Are you going to get back in? So what I'm doing, and this is tricky, and if you're not someone that follows the market all the time, I wouldn't recommend trying to time this, especially because what I'm talking about here is likely to happen rather quickly.

But what I am doing is, for example, I'm replacing some of my long exposure that's in SPY and QQQ with SPY and QQQ calls. So I'm trying to limit my downside because I believe that the downside is there by buying actually upside calls in case I'm completely wrong. Because it requires far less cash. It requires far less cash and it's limited to the downside. So I haven't looked at it now. I don't know. It's...

It's three or $4 for an April 620 SPY call. It's quite cheap. A month ago it was cheaper, but it's quite cheap now. And so it's not that expensive. It's called stock replacement. And even on Thursday, we had the VIX at 15. So just a couple of days ago, you had it and we could see the VIX at 15 again, 14. If things, as earning season goes on and all these macro things kind of start to fade away and the banks...

B of A comes out and Goldman saying M&A is going to be great. I mean, we could see a rally, right? And so I'm very aware that this time, trying to time this to like the day, I'm not trying to do that. I'm saying I see this coming. I'm well aware that we could see S&P 61, even 6,200 in the next month. But I believe

firmly that a correction is coming and that that opportunity is going to be there. But I'm protecting to the upside with some of these calls, raising the cash. And then I guess the horrible situation would be like, we don't have any upside movement. And so these calls are

just go down and become worthless. Plus I've been moved into cash and then we get a rally and we never get a decline. And now I'm sitting there saying, oh, when do I get back in? So I think for me, there is different types of capital. There's capital that is

is in retirement accounts and different accounts that I have mostly still in stocks that I'm not messing around with. I have another trading account where I trade and I can be nimble with, and I take a lot of risk in that account. I do a lot of option strategies. I move in and out of things. And really what I'm talking about when I'm talking about positioning my portfolio is with my trading portfolio.

Because, again, I'm fully aware I could be wrong. The market could move to the upside. I'm also talking about a quick dip here. But for people that are into trading and they're looking for alpha and they're not Buffett buy and hold, if they or they've got an account or a section of their segment of their funds where they try to do higher risk, higher reward type things. This is the higher risk, higher reward type thing that I'm doing now with my trading money.

That makes sense. And I guess, so there is path dependency risk, but the risk is that the S&P is flat and your calls expire worthless or lose a lot of value there. So you actually wouldn't mind if the S&P went up a bunch. And volatility is cheap. I mean, straddles might do well here. I see what you're saying. I mean, so when you said RSP, that's equal weight S&P. So weighting Apple as one 500th of the weight instead of what it is, 6%, 7%.

or I don't know if it's that high. And then IWM is Russell. So small cap stocks. Tell us about that because small caps just have really been lagging and they've continued to lag. And a lot of people say, why? And I say, why? Yeah, no problem. And so just-

Really quick, as I'm doing this, I'm not doing it like, oh, I'm going to sit down and I'm just going to do it today. The market actually often gives you chances. So I was regretting not having sold more and bought more puts when the Fed meeting happened. And I'm like, I did some of that ahead of the Fed meeting, but I didn't do as much as I should have in hindsight. But the thing to do was not to the very next day say, oh, I need to go continue with my strategy right now.

It was like, hey, the market might not be getting back to the all time highs again anytime soon, but it's going to at least kind of test an upper level. Right. So 6100, I think on S&P futures were the high. I felt like it's going to pop back up to 6000 on the futures. It did gave me another opportunity to do this more. And so it takes a little bit of time. If you're someone like a Warren Buffett, it can take months or years. And who knows if he's thinking,

I'm not saying he's thinking along the lines that I am. I'm not that conceited. But but that if he if he's just looking at things and saying with all of his knowledge, at some point, something's got to give a little bit here. I don't know when. And he just had to do it way early because of he's he's got an oil tanker. He's driving, not like me going around in a jet ski with my money pool. And he's got.

the Titanic. So he's got to do things a lot earlier over periods of months if he wants to position himself for a market decline. Now, to your question about the Russell. So yes, the Russell has been this kind of false hopes, spring eternal for the Russell and this broadening. I think that there was almost like a relative capitulation on Fed Day.

After 10 straight days of value out under performance and the drop that we had, like relative performance to the Qs, that might have been a relative performance low. And we'll look at the charts and see if that starts to bear itself out. And the reason why on Russell really is it goes back to valuation and it's just,

I know a lot of the Russell is not profitable and I know a lot of there's healthcare in there and different things. But the other thing you got to remember about the Russell is how small it is.

I think it's like half of the value of Apple. Isn't it around a $2 trillion total market cap? So it can get moved around a lot, just like silver can get moved around a lot relative to gold. Silver is like a $2 trillion market cap. Gold is like a $20 trillion. And if we get this type of a decline and people are looking for alpha, people are looking for beta, they're going to want to look there. And then with the larger companies, the RSP, the equal weight,

I just feel a lot of Trump's policies are going to be in the longer term, very pro-growth. And these companies are less exposed to, they're not as global and international as say a Google or an Apple is. And that the US economy, I think is going to be positioned well for growth in the coming years. And I'm very bullish on the stock market over the coming years.

But I feel like we're in for a wild ride for first half, at least of 2025. Right. And so I should say, you used to work at Russell Investments, which is related to the Russell. I heard the phrase, or maybe I saw it on Twitter, of don't own the Russell, own small caps. And I, in my personal portfolio, do that. And I think I've interviewed small cap investors.

Russell index beating small cap investors who have echoed the same thing. And the idea is basically in the Russell, there's 2,000 companies, 3,000 companies, and they're so low quality. So many of the companies are so low quality. And especially after you have an IPO boom of 2020 or 2021, these crappy companies, they have to go somewhere. They're not good enough to go in the S&P. They're not big enough to go in the S&P, but they go into the Russell. And then that's why, I mean, these companies just have been

lagging and lagging down. I look at the Russell now and probably it's less of an issue now, but some of the companies that have been on fire that in my opinion are scams or likely to be scams are some of the biggest weightings in the Russell 2000. I'm literally looking right now

And I understand your theoretical point that when the U.S. economy does well, these companies have a bigger exposure to the U.S. than they do, than S&P 500 do, because the S&P 500 are very exposed to Europe and Latin America and Asia. And the weightings of the Russell, almost 20% financials, almost 20% industrials, very companies exposed to the real economy. However, Mel,

Over the past two years, the US economy has not only outperformed nearly every expectation, it has crushed the rest of the world in relative performance in terms of real GDP. And yet the S&P 500 has gone nothing but up, but the Russell 2000

has stagnated. And as we said here today, at the end of 2024, the Russell 2000 is up, quote unquote, only 10%, which of course is a good performance. But relative to the nearly 30% move up in the S&P, it's not very good. And so over the past two years, the US economy has outperformed, yet the Russell has severely lagged. And that's not only in this massive passive bubble, it's also based on the fundamentals. I know

The MAG-7, which dominate the S&P 500, their earnings are up something like 40%, whereas actually, I think earnings for the small caps are actually down year over year. So if the US economy is doing so well, how come the small cap companies are having their earnings go down? Yes. Okay. I think those are great points. And I would add that I'm talking about

I actually am more bullish on emerging markets than I am on the Russell. This is more of like a beta play, a play on the size that it's not going to take a lot of money moving into it.

And I think there's a whole host of systemic reasons why the Russell is just generally not a great index. As you mentioned, I worked for Russell Investments when we still own the indexes. I didn't work in the index division. I worked in private client services and the index division was since sold off to FTSE in London. But I think the Russell composition is very different historically, right? Because companies used to go public so much earlier.

that you would get companies that were still going to become really great companies that were spending time in the Russell. Apple probably was in the Russell back in the day. Yes, exactly. Whereas now, Apple would be sold at a market cap where it's probably, when it IPOs, it may already be in the S&P or it's just at the top of the Russell. And then it goes and it graduates into the S&P. And this is the key problem of the Russell, which you're alluding to just for our audience, is that

The best companies leave the Russell because they graduate to the S&P. Yeah. Yeah. An old trading adage is don't sell your winners.

I mean, basically the Russell selling its winners and there's fewer and fewer winners because the real winners are staying private longer. They're going public. They're either not in the Russell because sometimes these indexes have rules for how long they have to be around before they go in there. By the time like they meet the rules for index inclusion, they're already in mid caps. They, they, they, they spend like my, like they go into the minor leagues for a year and the mid caps, and then they're in the majors and they're going to the S and P. And so you,

I think just longer term, it's just not a good index to hold longer term. It needs certain circumstances to really bump. And so emerging markets, again, that play is more around the dollar. And I think the dollar, similar to 10-year, is ready for a counter trend move lower, but

And I think a spike in the dollar higher would be part of this mix that I'm foreseeing that gets us to this calamitous type sell-off that forces this essentially massive intervention into our monetary system.

potentially a Bretton Woods 2.0, where literally we're having Besant sitting down with G20 finance ministers and just talking about, hey, guys, we all have this massive sovereign debt bubble. We need to do things about this. We can't just keep increasing percentages of our tax receipts going to net interest expense. And I think...

When other folks have talked about this, whether it's Luke Grohman or others, that the way to get debt to GDP down, you got to look historically. How did we do it after World War II? What we did was we had a period of yield curve control. We had the Fed and the Treasury set the long term 10 year rate at two and a half, short term at under a half a percent. Bondholders got killed.

The equity markets did amazing. When we took those controls off, because there were also price controls going on during the war, when we took the price controls off after VJ Day, victory in Japan, we had

15% average inflation for 46, 47. And lo and behold, the 120% debt to GDP was now 85 or 90 or something like that. And it just started going lower till we started growing it again. And so this inflationary component that I think is going to be the output of this calamity is

is why the V-shaped recovery will occur. Because we're not only going to get real growth from Trump policies that will take a little bit of time, but we're also going to get an understanding that there's going to be some inflation

that's going to have to flow through the system. It's going to try to be controlled as much as possible, but I think it's still going to be, and this was what we talked about back in March. I talked about a prolonged period of, let's call it three to 6% CPI readings and CPI is light. Everybody knows that. So we're really talking about five to 8% actual inflation for, but you do compound 7% actual inflation over four years. I mean, but you're at like 40%.

So this is a massive devaluation. And that's why this is an out there number maybe. But when you factor in growth and you factor in inflation that I think is coming, I think it's realistic we could see an S&P hit 15,000 by the end of Trump's term. Whoa. S&P 15,000 by the end of Trump's term. 15,000, yeah. Okay. Yeah.

How do you get there? Because what do you think is going to happen to corporate earnings? The S&P 500 on a historical valuation perspective is quite expensive. So are earnings going to double? If you think that... No, they don't need to double in real terms, but they might double in nominal terms. Of course, in nominal terms. In the equity market, everything is in nominal terms, except for the discount rate. But in nominal terms, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, let's just think about this. Let's just say that we had an organic, and I know it doesn't kind of make sense to talk about equities in real terms, but let's just say we had an organic 33% growth over four years, right? So let's just use easy numbers. 6,000, a third of that is 2,000. That gets us to 8,000, okay? Then let's say we had a 30%, let's call it a third, right?

of a inflation, right? Come into the market, right? So let's take that 8,000 and then let's add a third of that. So that's going to be 11, 12,000, right? That's a double of the S&P. I believe that's around what happened in the last Trump term was around 100% S&P game. So let's imagine that some real pro-growth policies come in there. And instead of 30%,

earnings growth over the next four years, where something closer to 50% in real terms, and we still have that inflationary component, we start getting up into that 14, 15,000 territory. So again, this scenario is less high conviction, but if we literally get deregulation

If we get America kind of first policies where like we've renegotiated tariffs and that's behind us, we've got trading alliances more aligned to helping out the American economy and American companies. And we've got

some inflation that the market knows is coming in. And so people do not want to be in bonds, right? They want to go in there. You can have multiple increase, you could have inflation, and you could have real growth. All three of those things, I think, can essentially get you at or near that number at the end of four years. It's an aggressive term, but markets have seen periods like this before, not necessarily in our lifetimes. But if you go back to the 20s,

We saw incredible growth. We know how it ended. And I think that's where the financial history really that I study really comes into play. It's just understanding volatile the equity asset class can be. How historically you can see these types of things like a doubling or even a 3x move in a five, six year period. And then you can see a 50% correction.

take place. And we could be back at seven, 8,000, we could hit 15. I mean, things can happen. And over time it smooths itself out, but equities as an asset class are an extremely volatile asset class. And we've had an extreme amount of volatility suppression. I would say since the GFC, really, we we've had, we've had federal reserve interventions. We've had

quantitative easing. We've had central banks around the world buying equities and corporate bonds. I mean, not the Federal Reserve, but the ECB buying corporate bonds. You had the Bank of Japan buying Japanese. We've had all of this central bank intervention that's just been volatility suppression.

And actually, when you get more volatility, you should expect actually potential for outsized returns. And so I think volatility is going to come back into the equity asset class over the coming years, but the potential for rewards will as well. And I think we're getting ready for a big change. I think Besant said it.

a monetary reset on the order of a Bretton Woods 2.0, the type of thing that happens like once in a generation, I think could occur in 2025. But again,

I'm painting a scenario that I'm putting a 40 to 50% confidence weight on right now, rather than, oh, I think S&P is going to 6,000 back in March. I feel I'm painting a scenario. I feel 70, 85% confident level on. And time will tell me if I'm like out to lunch and this is like completely, uh,

a bonkers idea or certain things will start to confirm this as we head through 2025. And so this will be an interesting one, but

Number one, I don't want to come on here and say what I don't really feel and what I'm not really doing with my portfolio. But I also don't want to come out here when I'm saying, hey, I know I'm getting a little out there on the deep end with some of this stuff. But sometimes when you see some of these tail risk type things, like I'm the type of investor, like I like to go for it a little bit. I recently put just a few hundred bucks down in the betting markets on a

on a 25 basis point cut by the Fed in January. It pays out 10 to 1. Probably not going to happen, but it's- Probably not going to happen. But if we continue to see volatility, if we see 10-year yields start to come in like they're starting to today, and if some of these job numbers get a little bit more concerning, it's possible. I mean, we'll see what happens with the December jobs report. We'll

The one thing that I think would really crimp that could be the CPI number. For whatever reason, they try to seasonally adjust these things, but January tends to be a hot CPI month.

And so if that does come in hot, that's definitely going to flush that $200 down the drain of mine. But I think there's also political reasons where what's going to happen is first Fed meeting with Trump coming in and all of a sudden the Fed's not cutting and different stuff. I think Fed, Fed, Treasury,

Fed Trump issues are going to be one of those things that worries the market, that Powell is not going to cut as much as Trump wants. Mortgage rates are going to stay elevated. Bond yields are going to stay elevated. And Trump is going to start tweeting about it, cut, cut, cut. These are things that the market just doesn't like to see. And we could have a breaking of the Fed-Treasury Accords. So this is something that happened in 1951.

where during the war period, Treasury was essentially telling the Fed what to do. Yield curve control, price controls were happening. Government did what it needed to do. And we're getting into a war footing, in my opinion. We're in a global economic war right now with Russia and China.

We're getting our allies or with us or against us. We're trying to get back our industrial production. We recognize from this Ukraine fiasco that the West does not have the military armament production capability that we need to properly defend ourselves.

We're starting to realize this isn't, this whole globalism thing is not working and that the world is splitting into some camps here with BRICS countries and Western nations and Japan and New Zealand and Australia. And we're starting to make changes that are based on national security and security.

global politics in the economic realm. And when you start doing that, the independence of the Fed goes bye-bye. And people in the markets don't like to see that. And I think Trump's going to have the opportunity to put in someone who he doesn't have to tell him what to do if the person he interviews for the job basically tells him everything he wants to hear when he interviews him. And we're going to have a Trump-Fed

And who knows, we might even have the Besson idea come to fruition, where if Powell really is adamant about not cutting rates, they do post a shadow Fed president or shadow Fed chair. Yeah, I think Powell's term doesn't end until 2026. So if Trump wants to put in one of his guys or one of his people, it would have to be then.

What is the monetary reset? What is Bretton Woods 2.0? And why do you think that would be so significant? Would that be part of the pro-growth view that is going to lead the S&P to 15,000? If we look at what happened with the inflation that came on board, which I mean, that's CPI 20. Let's say in the real economy, it was probably closer to 30.

A lot of that S&P earnings growth between 2021, let's call it, and now, I think 30% of that growth, you can just put to inflation. And so there's just a lot of parts to this whole thesis that make it very complicated. And that's why I make it less high conviction than some other ones. But they could also become extremely profitable if people have...

more cash than they normally would have to put into the market at some sort of a low, a 2025 low or around it. I understand getting back in, it's extremely tricky. And I'm not like 100% in cash. I listened to something, Jim Rogers was on a podcast, famed investor, started off with Soros decades ago, really was a mentor to Scott Besson. He moved all cash

just got out of all of his U.S. equity positions, holding on to Chinese equities, oddly enough. But so there are people, Buffett's got 300 some billion. There are people that aren't really market timers, but they seem to be trying to time the market a little bit to me. When you're building up that type of a cash position, if you're really not a market timer,

Either one, you should just be returning it to shareholders and saying special dividend because we don't have opportunities and we're not going to try to time the market and figure out when one comes. We're going to start doing special dividends of returning $150 billion to shareholders. It really makes no sense for them to hold on to that much cash unless they feel like there's going to be an opportunity to put it to work. A few things. Sorry. So Jim Rogers, I...

lucky enough to interview him for the first time that with me interviewing, but I've organized some interviews with him before in a few months ago. And yeah, he said he's, I believe, entirely out of US equities. But I believe it's the case that he's been either out or very much underweight US equities for a long time. And then on the Buffett point, I think that

Number one, he still owns a ton, Berkshire still owns a ton of US stocks and US businesses. I think it could be a succession planning thing of he wants to make sure that when these successors takes over that their portfolio isn't 70% Apple, because that could be a big deal. So there's a big, big factor there, but I would speculate. I absolutely agree. I mean, it's just prudent portfolio management. I mean, the Apple position was getting huge.

He's got other people that he's going to, like you said, want it. I think when Charlie passed away, it really put it forefront in his mind. I'm not going to be here forever. And let's unwind some of these huge positions I put on so that my successors aren't burdened by, by what I did. And so I, I totally agree that that's a big part of it. I try, I'm not reading too much into, into that, that, that cash hoard, but it is pretty significant. And I,

even if he is turning the reins over to successors, I think if one of those potential successors came to him and said, I see a really good 50, $60 billion opportunity here, they'd say, okay, go for it. You got my blessing, but they're just not seeing that. And so it is saying something there, there is some signal, but there's also some noise there. So all of this is to say that wild times often provide the greatest opportunities. And

I'm willing to put some of my money into cash. And let's just say I'm completely wrong. And the first six months are relatively smooth and uneventful. Maybe we have five or 7% pullbacks and different things. And, you know, what, at what point do I capitulate? I'll have to see all the writing on the wall. Like we can start to get to 61, 6,200 on the S and P and things are going good. And I've got a huge cash position, even though I have those calls and,

I'm going to have to say, wait a minute, this thing's not falling apart the way I kind of anticipated leading to this Bretton Woods 2.0 thing. I better get back on the trail. But I'm willing to give myself also a little bit of rope here and not rush back in. Let's say earnings do pretty well and we move to a new high and we hit $61.50 on the S&P in January 30th or something like that.

That's not going to pull me back in. I'm going to be comfortable watching the markets go up a little bit and knowing I've got at least some long exposure with options, a 25%, 30% cash pile now, which I'm going to want to increase to 50%, 60%, 70%. And then I also have some puts, some losses.

450 QQQ puts for March and April that are doing well since I purchased them that I'm looking for an opportunity to add to. But today is not the day to do that. And we said equities are a very volatile asset class. Yeah, they could triple in a few years. That is something about equities that's on a longer periodicity than the VIX. So the VIX is 30 days, how much they can move in 30 days.

You're talking about, I guess, multiple, many, many hundreds of days. And yes, equities can move up. Equities can double or triple, but they can only go down 100% or 90% and then 90% from there. And then, so tell us about that. What's this monetary reset? What is Brentwood 2.0? Yeah. And just one other thing that I think is in the mix that's also interesting

important is that I think QT is going to end in 2025. So I think the Fed's going to cut four times. I think QT is going to end at least four times and QT is going to end. And what that is, is basically we've got the weakness of deflationary pressure. So we've gone over that.

Then we add in the uncertainty around some of these, what I think are going to be even more surprising to market participants than expected Trump economic decisions. And so those Trump economic decisions, they're going to cause this sell-off. That is going to be seized upon by Besson, who is waiting for this, because he's seeing some of the things that I've talked about with eventually the Social Security movement

trust fund cliff, the unsustainability of debt to deficits. And I think he's going to say, we can take some pain now and we can save this economic system from a total collapse and come out of it on a really strong path. Or we can just try to bandaid over it and be revisiting it in 2027 or 2028 when Trump is still going to be in the White House, assuming he's still alive.

So they don't want to try to fix something next year and then just be fixing it two years later or three years later. I think that they want to fix something and make dramatic changes while they have the House, while they have the Senate, while they have the Supreme Court, while they have what they're calling a mandate to go ahead and make some of these radical changes. And so what I think is this is going to be an economic and

and geopolitical, just like the real Bretton Woods was. The real Bretton Woods happened 80 years ago this past July. The allies came to Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. The writing was on the wall that they were going to win World War II. They wanted to put together the new monetary system. They talked about what was going to be a reserve currency,

John Maynard Keynes, leading the British delegation, wanted something called the Bancor. He believed that having a single country's currency as a reserve would just be problematic. It would induce that country to simply produce more and more dollars, more and more debt in order to supply the global liquidity needs. And it's known as Triffin's Dilemma or Triffin's Paradox, an economist who wrote more about this later on.

And I think it's going to include a move away from the dollar as the core reserve asset, but not as the core reserve currency. And so they're going to want to continue to have the dollar function for transactions. And central banks over the decades have already been moving away from dollars and treasuries as the reserve asset.

And a lot of times people will put out these IMF charts on global FX reserves of central banks, and they'll show like the dollar going from like 70 some percent down to like 50s, 55, 56 percent, maybe close to 60 percent.

dollar as a percent of FX reserves. But what those IMF charts don't show is they don't show the portion of gold. So they're just doing out of all the currencies that a central bank holds, what percent is the dollar? They're not showing it. Gold has been increasing. If you include gold and you look at all central bank reserve assets, dollar is now less than 50% globally. So if

I think the Biden administration understood this was happening, and that's why they weren't afraid to weaponize the dollar against Putin. They saw the writing on the wall. People were like, don't weaponize the dollar. People are going to be afraid to use it as a reserve asset. I think behind the scenes, they were saying to themselves, people have already decided they don't want to use the dollar as the reserve asset anymore. China hasn't added any treasuries in forever. You look at their treasury holdings, it's pretty much...

whatever the market price of those treasuries is worth. So it's going down, but a lot of that decline is actually the value of those treasuries are going down because they're holding treasuries at 1%. And those Chinese treasury holdings are marked to market in the tick data from the treasury. You're sure they're valued at marked market? They're valued at market. Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. And so what we're seeing is we're seeing the move away from the dollar already.

The worst way to handle that would be just to have this kind of slow bleeding of it over time and not just come in and say, this is happening. We need to replace this with a system that works for the United States and the United States allies, those that want to be a part of this coalition. If you don't want to be a part of this coalition and you want to be a part of BRICS and the

the trade in your own currencies and net settle in gold. You go, you guys go ahead and do that. We're going to do what we're going to do. And exactly what that's going to look like. Again, we're really getting into speculating territory here. Could Bitcoin be a part of it? Wow. What would that do? If, if Bitcoin became part of a reserve asset scenario, like I don't, I that's, that's, that's a one, two, 3% chance right now in my mind.

Could that quickly rise to a 10% chance due to talk around this time period that really drives up Bitcoin? I think it could. Are Western nations going to begin using Bitcoin as a reserve asset? I think it's highly unlikely.

I think because the US owns 200 some thousand, they could get some legislation passed saying we're going to have a strategic Bitcoin reserve, which in effect we kind of do. All they might say is we're not going to sell any Bitcoin that the US government- Yeah, they wouldn't be buying it. They just would recognize what their holdings is. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if that is a strategic Bitcoin reserve, then-

Then, yeah, I could see that happening. But I could not see Bitcoin being adopted as a global monetary standard. I could see the option of people start talking about it on the podcast and on Twitter. And then the market prices as this could actually happen. So Bitcoin goes up to $200,000. Yes, I've never said that isn't going to happen. But I'd say I would be very surprised if it actually occurred that Bitcoin was adopted. I would be very, very surprised. We could see...

some states start. There are states that buy gold. We could see some states that buy Bitcoin, especially if the political leaders are well greased. And so there is potential for big movements in Bitcoin. I think there are potential headlines out there that could cause face ripping rallies, 15, 20 percent in a couple of days. There's also a lot of landmines out there that

could let a lot of air out of it. So we talked about equities as a volatile asset class. Again, Bitcoin volatility on steroids, right? So I do own Bitcoin. I own gold. I'm not trying to trade around those positions. I think gold will do well in these scenarios. And I think ultimately Bitcoin will do well in this scenario. And I'm very bullish on Bitcoin as well.

It would not surprise me if we saw a extremely strong move in Bitcoin over the course of the next four years during the Trump administration. Exactly what that price is, it would depend on what some of these regulatory changes occur. I think one thing that's just helping immensely already is the ETFs.

And BlackRock talking about it and saying a one or two percent allocation makes sense. It has diversification. It gives you some really high potential upside. It might help the Sharpe ratio of a portfolio if it ever divorces itself from the Nasdaq. So so we could see just on those without an official like central bank saying Bitcoin is the reserve currency. We could see Bitcoin easily hit 250, 300 a coin by the end of the Trump administration.

And even more, that's a wild card that's hard to say. I think that going back to this, what's the Bretton Woods 2.0, what comes out of it is it's going to be some sort of a, what you might call like a debt forgiveness program for countries where there's a coordinated effort to tamp down interest rates

yield curve control, for lack of a better term, until debt to GPs get under acceptable levels. And then it's going to be on these countries not to do the same thing again. And the way that they're going to try to ensure that is with some sort of a neutral reserve asset. I don't know what that looks like. The Keynes idea is

was something called the Bancor, which was a little bit not too different than SDR, special drawing rights, which are kind of trade weighted baskets of the major currencies that the IMF creates. But there are all kinds of interesting imaginative solutions that Besson and others could come up with. You could create a basket of based on GDP, like 25%, 20% U.S. dollar,

six or seven percent yen whatever whatever the gdp makeup is similar to an sdr but that also included gold or even a little bit of bitcoin in that in that basket that would be the most bullish situation there for bitcoin that they get included in some sort of reserve asset basket that central banks start using and so all of this then it becomes kind of trade weighted where

countries are able to net settle with each other with these baskets and that the weightings of them will change. And so you get, it could be a global organization like the IMF. It could be sort of a signed treaty of G20 members that sign into this that essentially say, we're going to allow international settlement in this area.

new neutral reserve asset that is not going to be made up of just solely U.S. treasuries, which has essentially been the situation. And so current accounts, the central, because there's a lot of this, ultimately, if you go to trade money in a bank, right?

Ultimately, these banks are the ones that have the windows to the central banks. The central banks between central banks through coordination through the BIS, the Bank for International Settlements, are able to settle up and true up all of these accounts. And the central banks can do things with each other. They can do currency swaps. They can do pretty much whatever they want to make sure that the global liquidity is where it is.

And right now they're using UST, US Treasuries, and going forward, they could agree that we need some sort of a more neutral reserve asset. And that would be

used during a set time period where yields are essentially kept under control through massive QE combined with financial repression, combined with forcing banks to essentially hold treasuries, which the Federal Reserve can do through its regulatory authority. So I think now...

when there's a crisis, the Federal Reserve gives swap lines to countries, to friendly countries. I think the BIS has a nominal role in terms of what you're talking about, but I think practically it is the Federal Reserve that is settling because the US dollar is the global reserve currency. So you think basically countries will run debt? Will they stop running deficits or will they just have the

your economies grow faster than the growth of deficits because if it's still growing faster than the economy then it doesn't matter if interest rates are at zero so if the federal reserve will essentially monetize okay they will take that onto their balance sheet like balance sheet goes to 20 trillion and and they don't sell it they don't do a qt

And so you're able to finance those deficits without adding to the debt load. But when the Federal Reserve holds U.S. treasuries, the Treasury sends the interest payments to the Federal Reserve and then the Federal Reserve sends those interest payments back to the Treasury. So like the eight trillion, I think now it's seven some trillion, like that's seven some trillion of debt of that 36 trillion number you hear that we don't pay any interest on.

So the way you get rid of the of the. Sorry, but the U.S. Treasury pays the Federal Reserve interest and the Federal Reserve pays interest to the banks. No, no, not on the balance sheet. They're paying the banks. They pay interest on excess reserves to banks. But that's for money that the banks give them to hold. Yeah. But when the Federal Reserve buys securities, they create reserves that are interest bearing.

The $7 trillion in U.S. treasuries that the U.S. government has to pay out interest to the Federal Reserve, all of that interest comes right back to the government. When banks own treasuries and then they deposit them as reserves with the Federal Reserve so that they're liabilities to a J.P. Morgan or a Citigroup, there's $7 trillion of treasuries that aren't a liability of a bank, a commercial bank. Those are the treasuries that are monetized.

The other treasuries that J.P. Morgan takes and deposits with the Federal Reserve as reserves are the treasuries owned by J.P. Morgan that, yes, they get paid interest on. Federal Reserve holds those treasuries.

Treasury pays them interest at any excess reserves above the capital crimes. The Fed can raise capital requirements. The Fed can stop paying interest on excess reserves should it so choose. It never pays. Since 2008, they've been paying interest on reserves. And right now, they it's.

If the Federal Reserve were to buy, let's just make it easy, a billion dollars worth of treasuries, the 10-year 4.6%, they would be buying it at 4.6%, and then they'd be paying the reserve that was created, but the interest on reserve is now 4.4%. So that's a 20 basis point carry that would be paid to the US Treasury. Yes. But they do pay interest to the system. So it is- Yes. Yeah.

Yeah, they're paying on it. I would completely accept your premise. If the short-term interest rate were literally zero, then yes.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. You need the short-term rates down, and that's going to be part of this. So maybe I'm getting a little bit confused, but what we have to do is go back to COVID when interest rates were zero, Federal Reserve's buying, interest rates are coming in, the Federal Reserve is sending huge checks to the Treasury. Federal Reserve's not doing that right now because of where the Fed funds rate is at. So you need the short end to be low for this whole situation to work, and then you can have the long end be capped.

cap. So they are going to have to go back to essentially a zero bound type policy for some period of time, which in World War II, I think it was three eighths of a percent was what they kept the short end at. So this would be everybody would know that this is inflationary. This is not market setting rates. This would just be outright open manipulation of the Treasury market.

a la 1940s style. Right. And so far, you've described a global effort to reduce debt to GDP by holding interest rates below the nominal growth rate. So it's required pro-growth policies, holding interest rates low. I also would say the deficit has to grow slower than the economy. Even if interest rates are at zero, you have to grow the

the economy faster than deficits. Otherwise, none of this is going to work. Mel, what about the US Treasury issuing very, very long-term bonds

issuing a ton of 10, 20, 30-year treasury notes and bonds, or even a 50-year, 100-year treasury bond, which the US has never done, other countries like Austria has done. I saw some paper speculating that this is what Besson was into. I have seen no official statement or unofficial statement from actual Scott Besson or any of his affiliated parties, but I did see a paper making a speculation that Besson was interested in issuing long-term bonds

So increasing the duration of the debt of the government. And he has been a vocal critic of the Biden Yellen treasury policy of funding at the very short end of the curve, which the Yellen treasury insists it is just doing the treasury's job of basically funding at the cheapest part of the curve because they don't want to disrupt markets by issuing at the 10 year, 20 year part and radically steeping the curve and increasing interest expense.

Yeah. What do you think about this whole duration aspect? No, no. I think, again, this is not my forte of like central bank operational nuances of the plumbing, right? Central bank history, I'm very good at.

nuances of the internal operations of the FOMC, the Open Market Committee, the Open Market Desk at the Bank of New York, how they go in there. And they're always changing it. Like the bank term funding program, they're always coming up with imaginative ways. Long-term debt, that's one possibility. Another possibility is these gold certificates, right? So when the Federal Reserve holds the Treasury's gold,

They issued certificates at the market price of gold at the time in the 70s, which was about $42 an ounce, I believe. The Treasury holds these certificates on the Treasury balance sheet at that price of $42 an ounce of gold. In Senator Loomis's strategic Bitcoin bill,

She states that she wants to pay for Bitcoin by resubmitting the gold certificates to the Federal Reserve, telling them to value them at the real value of gold and then sending that amount of cash to the US Treasury. It does not say in that bill that they need to sell the gold, just that they need to revalue the certificates and make the US Treasury whole.

How much is – so the gold that the Federal Reserve owns is held on balance sheet at the price at which they bought it way back in the day, which is ridiculously low. If the Federal Reserve were to realize that gain and transfer the – how much are we talking? Tens of billions? Hundreds of billions? At the current price, we're talking about somewhere in the ballpark of a half a trillion.

Okay, that's a lot. So it's not a huge amount, though. I believe we're holding around 261 million troy ounces, which is around 8,000 metric tons. So that's the U.S. gold stockpile. Now, I did do these calculations in an Excel a little while ago. I don't have the numbers off the top of my head.

But I was looking at what gold value do you need to really make like a dent in the debt and things like that. I think you need minimum $10,000 gold, maybe higher. Now, let's remember 1933 when the FDR came out and

In a single moment, revalued gold from 20 to $35 an ounce. That's a 75% increase, right? $15 out of the $20 base. So revaluing gold up, but devaluing the dollar against gold. And it devalues the dollar against gold. Yes, exactly. Now, the issue that I see with that is like Trump...

The BRICS have been buying a lot of gold. And so what this does is it really increases the wealth of our... And this is where I sneak in that little chance that Bitcoin somehow gets involved in this because Bitcoin is not obviously...

held by China, central bank or Russia, central bank. So we need this neutral asset. We need something to become this base asset that can essentially become a release valve for the dollar to devalue against. And gold to me is the historical choice and it makes a lot of sense. It could be a combination of these moves. So let's say we're going to revalue gold at 10,000. Plus we're going to issue gold

One point one point five trillion or three point five trillion of hundred year bonds. Plus, we're going to do so. How this all comes together, I don't know, but I do know Scott Besson would be able to come up with imaginative ideas to do this a lot better than I can right now.

He's someone that obviously, needless to say, knows the market. He knows economic history. He also has a very imaginative mind. When you listen to his podcast, he talks about his father had the largest science fiction library in the state of South Carolina, that he could go on a map and find everything.

point out Alpha Centauri in the sky before he knew where Chicago was. He loves to tell these stories. He loves to talk about financial resets. He loves economic history. But it's kind of a cometh the hour, cometh the man type situation. And I'm not like saying he's like a god or something, but I'm saying like he is someone.

who really understands the reality of markets from his hedge funds. He understands history from his professorship at Yale teaching economics, and he has the imagination that, you know, we've seen so many shocking, surprising things over the last few years, from Trump getting elected president to just things that people just didn't see coming. And I think a lot of people, they're just...

It's an imaginative leap to say we are really going to restructure the entire system to address the sovereign debt bubble. And the period in which this happens has to be quick. Otherwise, the economy collapses and that causes that quick sell off.

10, 20, 30 percent, who knows, maybe more. And then coming out of it, people say, my God, this is going to hurt bondholders. This is going to hurt some people. There'll be winners and losers. But now we have a footing to play off of for the next generation. That's going to be good. Let's go into the S&P and bam, 20, 15,000 in January 20th, 2029. Crazy scenario with non-zero probability.

I'm giving it a 40% chance now. Maybe some of your listeners will say 2% or a zero. As time goes on, three months, six months, nine months into this, we should know by then, did any of this really start to come to fruition? Because I think it has to happen quickly. I don't think he can afford to wait, see what happens in the midterm, do this in 20. This needs to be a 2025 at the latest 2026 type of deal. What is the...

crisis that is lurking the sovereign debt bubble that's going to burst what is going to happen to cause this you've talked about this and i'm very curious in scott best's views on this but you said something earlier about how the if the federal reserve marks the gold on its balance sheet

at the current price, that the US government could make a lot of money. The Federal Reserve could make a lot of money. And that makes me think there's so many other things of where there are biased assets of the US government. For example, Nvidia is now making billions and billions of dollars in profit every quarter.

That is an asset of the US government, but the US government doesn't mark that as an unfunded asset. If we have a real estate boom, every asset that goes up, every cash flow that goes up as GDP goes up, that is the taxing authority and ability of the US government goes up as well.

But we don't mark that as an asset. And I know you and other people talk about how Social Security is an unfunded liability, but we don't talk about the unfunded assets. And I mean, why can't this thing, this debt bubble, why can't it continue until I'm 80 years old or even when I'm 100 years from now? I spoke with a very renowned Stanford professor, Daryl Duffy. He talked about when he was my age, the IMF said that

80 debt to GDP of 85% was a red line and that there'd be a crisis if debt to GDP hit 85%. Now we're at 120% debt to GDP. He cited it on a hundred percent debt to GDP. That was a slightly different figure, but federal debt to GDP is 120, 125%. Why can't it be 225%? What's going to happen now? I think if you did that without addressing, so let's say you, instead of unfunded liabilities, you're talking about unmonetized assets, right?

So let's say they want to monetize assets. That would essentially be money creation in a sense, in a way, which would be inflationary. So I think if they don't try to figure out a way to manage the inflation through a coordinated action, because I think this is where we do live in a global economy. The central bankers in Basel, when they meet every two months at the BIS, the ECB needs to be in on this in some respects. The BOJ does.

Capital is global and these aren't things that can easily be done unilaterally. Those types of, I mean, they could be short-term solutions. Okay, we're going to try to monetize some federal lands, right? We're going to start a home.

building program or something that's going to, we're going to use federal lands, create trillions of dollars a year income from release of federal lands for building of homes or some imaginative idea comes up with to monetize this.

If you're doing that and you're just entering money into the system and you're growing the deficit, you're just going to kind of perpetuate this hamster wheel that we're on of larger deficits going to require even more larger deficits because we haven't addressed a fundamental flaw in the system, which is the US dollar as the reserve asset. The US dollar needs to be moved away from the reserve asset. To me, that is the core issue.

with being completely on fiat, being off of gold, is having a fiat currency issued by one nation as a global reserve asset that's kind of put us on this trajectory. And I think those monetization of assets could be a short-term solution to perpetuate it,

But I don't think they're actually a long-term sustainable solution. And I think Besset wants a long-term sustainable solution, not kind of more of the same. Yeah, that makes sense. What if, Mel, I told you that this asset that the dollar could be devalued against already exists? So there's

A lot of the Bitcoin people get really excited. Oh, my God, there's only ever going to be 21 million Bitcoin. And the stock to flow is so beautiful because it's even better than gold. What if I were to tell them there is an asset that the value, the number of things, not only is it capped at a certain thing, it actually goes down.

And I'm looking at December 2012, there were 26 billion of these things. And now there's only 15 billion. And probably next year, there's only going to be 14.9 billion. I'm talking about Apple shares and the US stock market in general. Why is Bitcoin this wonderful thing if the number is capped? I mean, there's still going to be increasing share, but with share buybacks, the number goes down.

I think the thing about Bitcoin that makes it valuable is, number one, over the years, this network that's been built up around it is not very easy to duplicate. So for people that say it's a software protocol, we're just going to recreate it and then there's a million Bitcoins. So there's a uniqueness to the Bitcoin network that can't be easily duplicated.

The other thing is that given the scarcity, the way that it's set up for 21 million, the fact that it can be sent everywhere instantaneously, those are advantages over the sending of gold, right? The other thing is people might say, well, it's just a software protocol. So is the US dollar, right? It's just a software protocol.

I look in the quarterly treasury bulletin. Every quarter, the treasury puts it out. It shows U.S. coin currency in circulation. It's 2.8 trillion right now. 20% or so of that is held by the Federal Reserve. So we've basically got about 2 trillion in printed money in the world floating around, and everything else is ones and zeros. So the U.S. dollar is ones and zeros. That's what the U.S. dollar is. That's what Bitcoin is.

Gold, what makes gold so special? When the US went off the gold standard in 1971, people were flipping out that gold is going to go to $10 an ounce. Who's going to want this? It's not used. It wound up going up like 25 times, right? From $35 to $800 some dollars an ounce over the next 10 years. So people put their trust in gold because they saw utility in gold as a store of value. If people put their trust in Bitcoin because they see Bitcoin as a store in value,

I don't see an impediment to it as a replacement store of value, but it requires trust just like gold does. It is software just like the dollar is. But none of those things say to me Bitcoin cannot become a part of a reserve asset of a central bank ever. That's just an impossibility. I think Bitcoin has been underestimated for a long time. And if people start believing in it and there's political reasons,

I think there are some other issues with Bitcoin. There's a concentration right now of it in certain people's hands. It's not perfect. And that's why I'm not saying, oh, yeah, Bitcoin should... I'm not like a Bitcoin maxi saying Bitcoin is going to be a strategic reserve.

just hold it up because it's going to 50 million. I have said that if on a, on a different show, if it ever did get into a situation of being part, a significant part of global reserve assets, given inflation and everything else over the coming decades, it could go to these 20, 30, $40 million price targets per coin. I think you have to be open to that possibility as small as that might be as a, as a scenario where it could occur.

I think when Bitcoin was a hundred bucks, nobody thought it'd be a hundred thousand 10 years later, but, but, but here we are. So I'm open-minded with it, but I'm not pinning my hopes to it. And I'm not like,

Going into debt to buy monster stock, that's for sure. But I'm also not here to poo-poo Bitcoin. I own Bitcoin. I see potential for it. And I see multiple scenarios where it continues to increase in value over the long term. And so just what is your counterpoint to my argument that U.S. stocks that buy back shares every year, their number, not only does it have a cap, an asymptote, and it basically stops going up, but it actually goes down.

So you like basically you S&P 500 shares as a reserve asset. In a sense, that's what the private markets have done, isn't it? In some sense, I think if you're going to be less kind, you'd say it's a little bit of a Ponzi because I mean, pretty much everybody's just putting their money in, like just on for the most part, automatically debited from their paychecks.

And I think that's one of the reasons other people talk about this. Jeremy Siegel, looking back and saying S&P typically trades around 15 times. It's just we're not in that world anymore.

And we say 15 times is fair 20 years ago. Now people say maybe 18, 20 times is fair. Who's to say that maybe in the future people shouldn't say 30 times? I think you also see that in housing, right? I did a post on Twitter yesterday. Ask Google how much...

AI how much a home cost in San Francisco in 1971. And it tells you a home in San Francisco in 1971 was $16,200. Adjusted for inflation in today's money, that's $175,000. And it is...

So what Google's doing is it's just applying the CPI to home values, right? And it's saying $16,000 in 1971 is the equivalent of $180,000 now. But we all know what a single family home goes for in San Francisco. It's over a million. So these are reserve assets, S&P homes that have been put into place to

Gold still does, but not anymore because people just can't trust the fiat. And so in Bitcoin's rise, it's not most of it in the last 10 years. It has nothing to do with the debasement of the dollar. Something doesn't go from 10 cents to 100,000 because of dollar debasement.

Gold's move in the last 10 years is because of the debasement of the dollar. Bitcoin's move is because of its growing acceptance as a reserve asset. It's growing acceptance as a store of value. And so if people believe houses are a store of value, Bitcoin, gold, and I think people are believing the S&P. Just buy it and hold it. It's going to go up. And I think in the long run, you're probably right.

I mean, I'm the one sitting here saying 15,000 by the end of 28, early 29. So, I mean, I agree that the market is creating reserve assets that are holding value because the holding things in dollars just obviously does not work. It never has worked.

And maybe that's a feature, not a bug, because you don't want people just taking dollars and putting it under a mattress. You want to force people to take their dollars and put it somewhere. But when it does get too crazy, like in a house or in the market, you can get into problems. The good thing about a gold or a Bitcoin is there's no natural use case for it. There's no fundamental valuation. Yeah. Again, that's a feature, not a bug.

If you had copper as the reserve metal, all of a sudden countries can't get electricity. When you have gold as the reserve metal, maybe Suzy can't get a new pair of gold earrings, but you know what? The economy is not falling apart.

And when earlier you said it's kind of a Ponzi scheme in the stock market, I see what you're saying. The difference is the stock market does have a fundamental valuation. And the fact that you, me, and people on TV, analysts, investors can say the stock market is overvalued. It's overvalued relative to its valuation. You can't say Bitcoin is overvalued or undervalued. It has no intrinsic valuation at all. The one people...

When people say they're valuing it based on something, it's not based on cash flow. Yeah. It's a supply to man. It's a supply to man. It's similar to gold. I mean, I think, take a look at silver and gold, right? Founding of our country, 15 to 1. What is it now? Like 80, 90 to 1 silver to gold? Silver has lost its monetary premium. I think if you look at ounces mined of silver or ounces above ground of silver relative to gold, it's 8 to 1.

So on a pure metal basis, the ratio should be around eight to one. It's around 80 some to one, meaning that if gold did not have any monetary premium, it could conceivably be like $200 an ounce. What's giving it that $2,500 price is this belief. Investors and central banks buying it. Yeah. And the belief in it, the belief that this is something, even though it's simply an element of

that really just sits in vaults, gets dug up from the ground and then put back underground. And Mel, so when you were talking about real estate and houses in San Francisco, so adjusted for inflation, the houses in San Francisco should only be 150,000, 175,000 grand. We know they're way, way more. So what I said about the stock market, you're saying about real estate, it's just...

assets have gone up. I mean, Mel, is it the case maybe that your entire life and if someone's watching this 50, 60 years old, whatever, their entire life there's just been a giant speculative bubble in assets which are denominated in dollars and fiat currency and it's been devalued. You did say that

dollars get devalued over time stuck in your mattress. Yes. But if you, I think bill like so gold and stocks and real estate and long-term bonds have outperformed like bills, short-term government notes. But if you just have owned that over time, I actually think you have out-earned inflation by a small amount, but if you own it and you don't do anything with it, you stick in your mattress. Yes, absolutely.

But there is a problem with this use of real estate, right? Part of the big problem where people are having trouble affording homes is because they become these stores of values. And that's the problem of using something useful as a reserve asset. And so the thing with the stock market is capital has to go into that. And so you have to provide a compensation for the risk and the volatility, a return commensurate with that relative to what would be

of risk-free. So if you look at a 10-year treasury and a risk-free rate, yeah, there's supply and demand components to it. But at the end of the day, it's kind of a proxy for NGDP. It's the market saying, if you own a market cap weighted percentage of every income generating asset in the United States, which is what grows GDP in nominal terms, like you're

You would be ambivalent between holding a market weighted basket of the entire U.S. economy and a 10 year over a 10 year period. And the more you think that U.S. economy is going to do well, the more that 10 year needs to yield to to to give you that risk free rate.

What happens is if you have a stock market capital and you have that alternative of the risk-free rate out there to compensate for that volatility, it needs to be even more. And so this is one of the reasons why we're seeing these big gains, right? I mean, so as the S&P 500 becomes a global reserve asset, because you're seeing relative to other markets,

And this is kind of a fascinating topic. I've never had a discussion about the S&P and full credit to you. You brought it up with Apple shares. I mean, it is truly what is going on in real time. We're seeing the SPX become a reserve asset. And I guess the thing is, while it could work, don't you want an ideal reserve asset? And part of an ideal reserve asset is actually lack of utility. And so, again, it's a feature, not a bug of things like gold and Bitcoin.

Yes. And I guess I'll credit, I think it was Jim Chanos on Twitter who made this point about Apple shares. I think other people have made this point before, but it was his tweet that made me say it because I was thinking of it. Yeah, it's funny. I mean, do you think that just the huge asset bubble we've had over the past four years is due to, and when I say asset bubble, it's

It's not that the S&P has gone up or real estate has gone up and that's a bubble. It's that they've gone out well in excess of inflation, as well as non-utile, basically things that should be useless, gold and Bitcoin, have gone up tremendously as well.

I guess, would you say that that is the result of a fiat currency bubble? But the only, if we stop the fiat currency bubble, and not that I'm saying I agree it's a fiat currency bubble, but there would just be a giant depression. And that's the way if you want housing to restore to fair value. But people say they want a depression. Nobody wants that because you had the depression when we were still on the gold system. And what happened when the bubble pops, you get deflation.

And deflation is what that's what gives central bankers nightmares, right? Because they know what happens with deflation and they don't know how to handle deflation.

that well, right? They'll talk about, we know how to, we have tools to handle inflation. It's hard. We have, we don't really, we have tools to kind of stoke economy, but deflation is a tricky son of a gun. And nobody that's in a position of power in the global elites that run the modern economies wants to see deflation. Some people might argue if they're like kind of monetary purists, this is what we want. We should have a cleansing. We

But that would cause so much real pain and heartache, right? I mean, there'd be kids out of school. There'd be starving people all over developing nations. Like when your choice is, do we inflate or do we go through a cleansing monetary purist deflationary depression in order to correct the system? What global policymakers choose every time is to inflate. And that's why I didn't spend too much time talking about deflation as an alternative to solving this issue altogether.

I focused on inflation being being the route and then having a sustainable path so that like that is going to mean like harder choices. Right. Like you can't just say, OK, we're going to reset the system and start doing the same thing all over again.

Theoretically, you could. And maybe in reality, that's what's going to happen. There'll be this reset with all these promises made by these G20s that we're going to get back on the sustainable path of deficit spending. And we're not going to do like hardcore austerity, but we are going to stop the runaway train of government spending. And we're going to do some hard negotiations with the healthcare companies. Maybe the healthcare sector gets hit hard because

They're just not going to be able to get as much profit. We're going to restrict tort law so that doctors don't need to pay astronomical amounts in liability insurance, malpractice insurance. We're going to do a bunch of things to get more on the sustainable path, part of this economic restructuring. And then over time, human nature will probably unravel it all again. And then in 40 or 50 years, the grand ideas will be leading us to a point

Again, and maybe if I live to be Jimmy Carter's age, I'll see it, but likely I probably won't. Yeah, rest in peace, Jimmy Carter. Can you sum up your views? What do you think will happen to the stock market in the near term? What do you think will happen to the S&P by year end 2025, as well as repeat your very bold target for the end of Trump's term?

So I see the timing on it. Don't know, but a choppy, volatile first half with a minimum 10% correction occurring, possibly much steeper, 20, 30%, leading to a massive conversation discussion, perhaps something less dramatic than a Bretton Woods 2.0, but massive steps being taken to address that situation quickly so that it does not get out of hand. This could be Federal Reserve interventions into the markets,

It could be QE, it could be a new Bretton Woods that then causes a V-shaped recovery ending the year in the $7,000 range on the S&P. So a very volatile first half, a sell-off, a recovery, and overall a strong year. Going forward, I believe the more structural changes that get put in place during this 2025 period that are truly...

what we need right now, which is a period of controlled but sustained inflation and pro-growth policies that these could spur through both inflationary impulses as well as pro-growth policies that could spur the S&P all the way to 15,000 by January 20th, 2029. Boom. There we go. Thank you, Mel, so much for coming on Monetary Matters. It's been a real pleasure. People could find you on Twitter at MelMadison1. They should check out your book, Quaz, Financial Thriller.

People can find Monetary Matters not just on YouTube, but on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else they get their podcasts. Thank you again, Mel. Thank you to everyone for watching. Until next time. Thank you. Just close this door.