YouSaid · the spoken record

Grant Williams

lines on the record: 41
first: 2020-06-14
most recent: 2020-06-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Want to own gold? Do they want to own Bitcoin or do they want to cash out their Bitcoin because they're not sure? I don't know the answers and I'm fascinated to watch it.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, for me, what I've wanted to see from Bitcoin is how it performs in a crisis. We kind of nearly got to look at that a couple of months ago, and it didn't do great, which is understandable. All risk assets got sold off. So I definitely want to see what it does in a crisis. If it goes to 20,000, we've kind of seen that before. We saw that back in 2017, end of 2017. We saw that run up to 19 odd thousand where it got to. So I think that will give people confidence again. But I think to get the juices flowing like we're seeing in some of these Robin Hood stocks at the moment, it's going to have to do something really crazy, right? Which it could conceivably do. But it won't be more, as Luke said, than a tail position for me until I see an event and I see do people run to it or away from it because I know in an event people will run towards gold because they always have done. Yeah, you may get the initial margin called selling, but people will.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, Billy Connolly said the definition of an intelligent person is someone who can hear the William Till overture and not think of the Lone Ranger. I think that's a way better, who's smart, who's not.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Things, all you have to find a lot of smart friends that really understand it and ask them questions about it and get the dummy's guide, which is the route I've chosen to go. So, you know, my opinion is everyone should own some, but people asking me, for my opinion on Bitcoin, they're a way better people than me to ask. You being one of them.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm going to give you my very succinct Bitcoin answer because I get asked about Bitcoin a lot and I don't try and avoid the answer, but my answer is always the same. I'm like, look, I'm bullish on Bitcoin. I think everybody should own some Bitcoin because it's a great option on an uncertain future and it could potentially be a game changer for a lot of people. But my understanding of it and the depth of my knowledge on it is so far below the people that immerse themselves in this thing that I don't see how my opinion is of any constructive use to them whatsoever. Because the people who understand Bitcoin understand it way better than I do. And the gulf, in my experience, when you don't immerse yourself in Bitcoin, it's such a fast-changing technology. It's such a fast-changing world that I think you either have to make a commitment to be deep, deep, deep into blockchain and really understand it, which means you have to give up a lot of time trying to understand a lot of other.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Should be listening to guys like you talking about these outcomes because you have to have a plan for a Weimar outcome. You have to have a plan for municipalities declaring bankruptcy. You have to have a plan for these things now because they're all in play, every single one of them.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We've seen the trial balloon, right? We've already seen that trial balloon. I forget who it was. It was a very prominent Republican politician. Can't remember which one it was now, but a couple of weeks ago talked about how he thought that municipalities should be allowed to declare bankruptcy. And immediately everybody kind of jumped all over him. I mean, it became a big thing for a couple of days and they hushed it up pretty quick. But that felt like a trial balloon to me. I mean, yeah, we had during the Great Depression, people forget that Arkansas went bust, right? The state went bust. So there is precedent for this stuff. Again, we're in a modern world where this stuff hasn't happened and it's not entertained. But at this point, everything is on the table. And anybody who's trying to structure a portfolio, trying to manage a portfolio, who isn't entertaining the most extreme outcomes in terms of how they're thinking about protecting themselves from possible tail risks is missing a trick because”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A third of the working population. And so suddenly this problem is everybody's problem and everybody is either, well, as Thorsten's chart today, 50% of households have lost employment income. So that's 50% of everybody that everybody knows has lost a job, which is why we're seeing the consumer spending numbers fall off a cliff and people. The savings rate going through the roof. So this is where we're at. And so now you don't have an option to bail out the banks because pick a number of how many millions of people need that extra unemployment check. So QE was great when they did it first because no one really understood what was going on. Now people still don't understand it, but they feel bilked because there's been enough ink spill talking about how Wall Street was bailed out and not Main Street. So even if they don't know what that means, they can grab onto that and it's a cause to rally behind to demand to”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think the beauty, if you like, of QE was that it was just arcane enough. People are not really understand it. Everybody that you trust from a political standpoint and the Paulsons and Bernanke's, all these trustworthy guys are standing up and saying, we're going to save you. Right? This is what we're going to do. It's basically a variation on the theme of the old joke about what's the difference between a recession and a depression, right? Recession is when your neighbor loses his job and your depression is when you lose yours. And that's kind of where we're at now in that We had this sharp spike in 08, and a lot of people's lives got turned upside down.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, bailing out Just Wall Street is no longer an option because the people are wise to that now. So I just think that takes us full circle to where we started this with this unlimited amount of printing that's going to have to happen because now you've got to bail everybody out. You don't have a choice.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This once this begins, as I said, you're not going to be able to take this money away from people. A, because they're going to need it, and B, because if you try, they're going to get pissed. And we're in an election year. And what you don't want are pissed people. So we've crossed the Rubicon, but we've leapt over the Rubicon. We didn't even wade through it. We just leapt to the other bank and we were running. And I dread to think what this will turn into, this experiment in UBI because the hands are out and From what you said, Preston is absolutely right, right? Wall Street has been bailed out to an unconscionable degree and Main Street deserves their bailout. There's no two ways about it, right? But it's tough to see how they bail out Main Street and keep the system together, whatever that means, because they either bail both out or they choose a politically expedient route, which is bailing out Main Street and let the system go to hell, which they can't do.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They say there's nothing more permanent than a temporary government program. And one that gives money to people. Once you give people money, try taking it away from them, right? Particularly, as Luke pointed out, in an environment like this where people have, you know, you come home and by the front door, you've got your protest outfit. It's like, I'm home from work, honey. I'm going to put my black mask on and my ninja suit. I got to pick up the banner. Which banner are we taking out today? People are in that mood. And so they're getting checks from the government. They're also reading all kinds of articles about the fat cats who are becoming even richer and wealthier than them. 1,200 bucks is great when it comes through the door, but you realize it doesn't really make the difference you need it to make. And so you want more. And there are plenty of things you can hang your hat on saying how Wall Street got bailed out and Starbucks took 10 million PPP loans and all these Chipotle. We're going to boycott them. We're going to do this. So once this thing begins, there's no way the guys who are going to write these checks and sign them don't understand.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Two years later, it was 19. In 72, it was 3%. Two years later, it was 12%. And so that's how quickly these things happen when they happen. And we've built up a hell of a lot of complacency in all component parts of this financial system that we operate in. And inflation is a big part of that. And the complacency around inflation saying it's just not something you have to worry about is just another dangerous thing to take for granted, I think.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not quite there, but we're approaching a tipping point where people do start to worry about a job and start hoarding and seeing the price of meat go up and think, well, I'm going to fill the freezer. I bought a new freezer because of COVID, so I may as well fill it with meat now. We're close to that. Again, it's like a lot of these things. We keep coming back to this in this conversation. We're close. We're close. We're close to all these crazy outcomes. And for 40-odd years, inflation's been a crazy outcome, right? It's just another example of something that we have a generation of people for whom there's not been an issue or a problem or a likely outcome. And so it's been just discounted and put on the shelf as something from the history books. And we could go, Ronnie Stirfler put out a fantastic chart of inflationary surprises. So in 1915, inflation, this is US CPI, was 1%. In 1917, two years later, it was 20%. In 1945, it was 1%.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I was just going to say the inflation thing, it's all about expectations, right? It's all about people's expectations. And if expectations rise, then that's really often all it takes. And we're seeing that. People's expectations based on what's happened are increasing. And that's a very dangerous place to be. I mean, the bond market is screaming deflation and the price action would suggest that even if we do get inflation, we're going to have to go through another deflationary shock of some sort before we get there. But people's willingness to bear higher costs and people's expectations and people's feelings. You have a more intense feeling about inflation when you lose your job because suddenly everything seems more expensive to you, right? Because you don't have any income. And it's just this mindset that people are in believing that prices are going to go up. That's what it takes for people to start go out and try and get in front of that. And the data that we're seeing suggests that we're...”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Malga made a great point to me about this when I spoke to her a couple of weeks ago. She's talking about people's willingness to bear inflation now, having been locked down. Everybody has a recent memory of going to the grocery store and not being able to buy what you want. So you go back in a few weeks and a loaf of bread's five bucks instead of 250. People are probably going to go, yeah, well, it's better than having no bread like we had a month ago. So yeah, I'll pay the five bucks for the bread. And it's that willingness to accept the higher prices that is the kind of turning the key to this thing. And if we get inflation, we haven't talked about that yet. But if we get inflation on top of all this stuff.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Decided, but with what's going on, and you know, Luke, when you talk about what was going on in Germany back during the Weimar Republic, we've seen flashes of that in the last few days. We've seen social media posts from people outside their window in New York. I was talking to someone this today that I'm looking at this thing and it's like a scene from a Batman movie, The Dark Knight or something, right? It's just chaos in the streets of New York, just utter lawlessness. And there were so many of those, those kind of posts. And you look around, you think, how did we get here? So we can go from things are kind of screwed up right now to how do we get here in a matter of three or four days. That's what people have to understand is that outcomes like Venezuela and outcomes like the Weimar Republic are crazy until you're three days away from them.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For me, the outcome is uncertain, but what I'm just listening to are two very smart, very knowledgeable guys discussing whether the US is Venezuela or Weimar Germany, right? But that's the important thing for me, right? Because you're both saying it with a straight face, and they're both possible outcomes. That's a really, really important thing for people to understand. 10, 15 years ago, hey, we wouldn't have been having this conversation. And B, if you had it done, it wasn't a possible outcome. It was kind of some fantasy that you were thinking about. Well, let's just game this out just for fun. Right. But when guys like you, arm wrestling over those two outcomes, it tells you that we're in a place that is on a path that potentially leads to one of those things. And how far down that path we are is to be.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let me ask you a question because we're talking about okay, what do they do if this thing runs away? But we may be at the point now where why would they think like that? Why would they try and stop this thing running away? Because at the end of the day, they realize now if it stops going up and starts coming down, they're on the hook, right? They're going to have to spend an unlimited amount of money, which they've said they're willing to do. I can't believe they want to do it because they realize that they're going to need all these bullets at some point. Maybe this is like, okay, well, we've already shown that we don't take the punch bowl away. Why don't we go and put another fifth of Jack Daniels into this thing? I mean, it's what possible reason do they have to try and stop this running away now”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which may surprise people, but I don't. I mean, I'm not looking at the price of gold. I'm looking at what buys me relative to other assets. And as you said, it buys me 7% more S&P now than it did a few months ago. And that's even with all this. If you measure the S&P in gold ounces, it's where it was in 1994, right? So you could have had your money in gold this whole time and not missed out on any of this stuff, right? You could buy the shares today, the same price you could have in 1994. I had no stress. So none of us really know. It's kind of a mystery. But then it'll do what it does in its own time to me. I don't know what you think, Luke.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Springing back. And gold always just sits there, right? It doesn't do anything. It's just an inert rock at the center of the financial system. And all the chaos goes on around it. And it's never really a case of gold rising. It's a case of things around it sinking. And right now, the stuff around it isn't sinking. Gold's kind of just sitting there. And optically, risk assets are higher. Everybody's got the bit between their teeth again. And gold really hasn't done anything. I mean, I suspect what you'll see is when the bear market resumes, which is my base case, you will see gold optically start to look better. And you'll see people coming into gold. We've seen it a little bit in the mines. We've seen some people starting to buy the mining shares and it really gave them a kick because it's such a small market. But yeah, nominally, why hasn't gold gone up? I don't know, but it's really not something I spend an awful lot of time thinking about, which.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The question with gold is always why, right? It's always why and then when. They're the two questions that everybody wants to ask about gold. And it's normally why is it not done X and when is it going to do Y. And if you look back at mid to late February when the market cracked, you had this period at the beginning where the stocks were tumbling and gold was also falling and everyone's sitting there saying, the hell, gold's supposed to be going up. Why is my gold not performing? But there was a period there in the first couple of weeks where your one ounce of gold bought you 33% more in terms of units of the S&P, you know, 10 day, two-week period. So it did what it was supposed to do. And I think a lot of people get kind of horn swaggled by fixating on the price of gold. And people talk about why is the price not gone up. And like you, I would have expected the price to go higher. But when I look at it, I look at all the other stuff that we've been talking about, all the levers that were being pushed. And, you know, now there's four or five guys pushing on this lever to stop it.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Then what's happened in the last three months doesn't get repaired by what repaired 2008 doesn't work. So you just have to kind of sit here and deal with the madness and kind of maintain your focus on the end game of this thing and look at the way you do, look, look at what's out there and not in front of your face because what's in front of your face is very, very misleading. And it's a head fake that's going to catch a lot of people, I suspect.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Before this, going back a couple of years, every couple of months you'd see an article talking about how 50% of Americans didn't have 500 bucks for a surprise auto bill or the fragility in the system. How many people don't have any savings? How many companies, how many zombie companies there are in the S&P? It's in the hundreds, which is crazy. We knew the system was fragile. We all knew that. And all the data is out there. It's been swirled around for a couple of years. And now here we are, right? Where all these fragile businesses have lost a quarter of their year's revenue. People have lost jobs. There was a Deutsche Bank charter today that Torsten Slock put up. 50% of households have lost employment income in the US. And it doesn't matter which way you cut it. If you understand the fragility of the balance sheet of corporate America, household America, and governmental America, if you understand the fragility and the numbers are all there,”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You haven't had this ability. We all look at the stock market, right? And the stock market is supposed to reflect economic reality. What really you need to do right now is be out on the streets talking to business owners to get a real sense for how bad this is. But of course we can't. They're all closed, right? You can't even go into the store and talk to these guys and say, hey, look, what's one of things like on the ground? We've got the PPP that will roll off at some point. I'm sure they're going to have to re-up with that because the effect that's going to have on the unemployment numbers. So that real economy is totally being masked by the stock market performance. And the disparity between the two is so extreme.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they will, to what we've been saying all along in this conversation, they will buy anything, print anything, do anything, whatever they have to do, because I think Luke's right. I think they realize now that the gun is to their head. And every single chicken that they've hatched is coming home to roost at the same time. And so if they don't step in now and do quote-unquote whatever it takes, this thing falls over in a hurry. And I guess to their credit in some way, I think they realize this. And I think they understand how bad a situation they're in, which tells me they will come up with all kinds of crazy stuff. Luke, you've been talking a lot about yield curve control, right? Which, I mean, I'm sure has to happen at some point, and maybe so, right?”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it was like, what's going on with Chester? Oh, it's nothing, nothing to see here, right? And we saw those lips in the test bed and everyone I knew that was involved in that market was like, dude, this is serious, right? This doesn't happen. This shouldn't happen. This can't happen. And I think the repo is the same thing, right? We had this crazy period and the fury with which everybody in a position to was saying this is nothing to worry about is perfectly normal. That tells you how big a problem it is. And these things do the test spread quietened down originally until it just went off the reservation. And I think the same with the repo market. The stresses are there. What's happened in the real world away from equity markets, we're seeing that erosion of trust again that we saw in 08, right? The counterparties aren't sure what's going on and they want to hoard their cash and they want to only do business with people that they're convinced they can do business with. And the only person who's going to be able to step into this is going to be the Fed, right?”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do you remember back in 2007 there were about eight people in the world that knew what the TED spread was? Remember that, right? There's nine.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Looked like a window for me into the real world. I looked at it and said, that's what happens when the Fed are not in there because it kind of caught them off guard, right? And it's like, oh, right, we need to get on top of this quick. And that to me was just confirmation that we're not going crazy, right? When the DeSX Machina is removed, markets do function the way we think they're going to function. And economic reality does weigh on sovereign bonds, even the mighty US treasury market. So that to me was I agree. I think it's incredibly important and I think they will be paying attention to that and they will do everything they can to stop that happening because that window were it to open leads exactly where you said it would leak.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Five cents on the dollar, right Yeah, but this stuff is all happening and it's so confusing for everybody right now, almost more so for the people who spend all day looking at this stuff because you just have no idea where up is anymore. Everything is coming at you is completely misrepresentative of everything you've learned over your time in the business”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Look at these charts, you know, the unemployment charts that we've seen, the initial claims, the continuing claims. I mean, when you talk about off the charts, they are literally off the charts. And people don't seem to be bothered by it because I just don't think they can get their head around it. So I don't know how this works itself out or what it takes for people to think, well, this isn't a V, this isn't going to go back to how it was. I just don't understand how that's even an option in people's minds. You know what I mean? It's clear that that's not going to happen. So this is what I'm really struggling with at the moment. I put all the Robin Hood stuff aside because that's just crazy. And you look at what happened today, unless tomorrow is even crazier, today is going to be one for the record books with some of the stuff that went on, you know, Chesapeake today, you know, up 171% files for chapter 11 after hours. I mean, it's extraordinary what's happened.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A great shot I saw from Eric Pomboy this week, and he plotted the treasury net receipts the last 12 months against the Fed balance sheet. And as he said, for the first time ever, the amount printed by the Fed has exceeded the total tax receipts of the Treasury over the 12-month period. trillion and they've printed 3.31 trillion. So that's it, right? But for guys like us that watch this stuff, this is what a time to be alive, right? If you like charts, take one look at it and go, wait, what? Hold on a second. This doesn't make any sense. I mean, I see 15 a day now. It's extraordinary. And I think what's amazing is there's so many of these things that everyone's just saying, okay, I just need to ignore this until we get something I can relate to again and I can take a look at this thing. Dave Rosenberg is all over this and he's putting some fantastic stuff out. Anyone's not following Dave on Twitter, they should be. And he's calling this stuff out.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you're a guy with a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right? And they've got a hammer. This looks great. They're going to go, well, hey, look, what happened when we threw two trillion at it? So maybe we have to throw three trillion next time, but we'll get 60% bounce. I mean, it's craziness to me, but we have to sit and watch this thing play out.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And there's various end dances and balls being spike left and right and backwards and forwards. It's always fun to watch. And it may just be that perhaps the euro, there's still this question mark over the German Constitutional Court ruling hanging over it. So people aren't 100% sure how that's going to go. So they're hedging their bets with that given what the Fed have done, what they are committed to do. And it's not often you get very carefully planted fed articles talking about how their balance sheet is unlimited. There's a reason that we're seeing those quotes out there. That's to tell people exactly what's going on here. And the flood of money that's going to get thrown at this thing as and when it's needed, I mean, I don't think they're going to wait at all. I mean, we've seen that. They've acted so fast this time around. And what's happened ironically is going to embolden them, right? Because they have got this snapback bounce, which I don't think is purely down to Fed liquidity this time.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's interesting. I mean, you would think that given what they've done so far and the fact that we know this is the beginning, not the end of this, you would have expected the dollar perhaps to be weaker than it has been. I think your point is exactly right. It's surprising to me that we haven't seen it come off materially harder than this. The Luke Crom and Brent Johnson show rolls on Twitter.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Job than Luke of paying attention to this stuff. His work around this is light years ahead of anybody, frankly. And what's happening over in that part of the world bears a lot of our attitude. Things could get kind of very shaky, very fast over there, I think.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly right. And if you look at some of the propaganda in China about the unrest in the US, I mean, they've gone full force with this stuff. There's a picture of it's kind of a cartoon, but there's a statue of liberty kind of with a utopian chaos and out of the green shell is like a policeman kneeling on someone at the bottom of it. I mean, they're not putting any punches. And, you know, the quotes that have come out from professors at various universities in China, obviously free speech. What they're saying is clearly party directed and it's all about the hegemon. It's all about Thucydides trap being real. It's all about the US quote unquote manic behavior towards the People's Republic of China. You've got both sides kind of coming together. You've got harmony in the White House and amongst the Republican Party at point the finger at China. You're going to have the Democrats also are going to struggle to be pro-China. So this is all coming together. And nobody does a”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Talk about forgiving emerging market debt is a classic play, right? Let's get everybody on our side. And so I just think it's a really important article, the one you posted, and so is this Telegram, so is this memorandum from the State Department. And I think we're entering a very difficult period that could be fraught with conflict and two big superpowers very much at Odds with each other.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of course, anyone to even bat an eyelid, but he basically said capitalism and communism cannot coexist peacefully. And we're here to make sure that communism wins. And so they asked Kennan what this meant. And his boss at the time, the ambassador said, answer as you see fit. And this guy wrote a five and a half thousand word telegram where he pulled no punches and he basically called out the Soviets and said, listen, this is war. We cannot do anything the best we can do is contain them. And it set the policy for the Cold War, essentially. And that's what we've just seen happen. And the amazing thing to me is, Luke, you posted what Pippa posted coming so soon after this. This article was posted May 20th and it was literally within a matter of days that the stuff in Hong Kong happened, right? With Beijing cramming through the security laws in Hong Kong. If you think that's anything other than a tacit declaration, this is the way it's going to be, we're not going to hold back anymore. So I think, Luke, this idea of them trying to lead and”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of economic and political reform in China. Over the past two decades, reforms have slowed, stalled, reversed. They say the CCP has chosen instead to exploit the free and open rules-based order and attempt to reshape the international system in its favor. Now, that's just the first two paragraphs. This thing goes on. And it's an extraordinary document, and people should absolutely look this up and read it because, as I say, it's a de facto declaration of war against China. When I wrote about this, I went back to the Cold War and there was a guy who worked in the embassy in the Soviet Union called George Kennan. And he was a lifelong civil servant, and he wrote a telegram back to the State Department in Washington. He was asked for his opinions when the Russians were refusing to endorse the IMF. This was 1946 and refusing to endorse the World Bank. And Stalin gets up and makes a speech, which, as I pointed out, was very much within the Soviet doctrine of the time. This shouldn't.”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, the timing is amazing for me. I wrote a piece that I published yesterday called The Lung Telegram. There was a memorandum published by the US on May 20th. It was basically a memorandum from the US. It came out of the National Security Council, came out under the presidential seal, and it basically essentially declared war on China. And it's a fascinating piece. And I'm going to read you the opening couple of paragraphs, right? It says, This is from the White House. Since the United States and the People's Republic of China established diplomatic relations in 1979, United States policy toward the PRC was largely premised on a hope that deepening engagement would spur fundamental economic and political opening in the PRC and lead to its emergence as a constructive and responsible global stakeholder with a more open society. More than 40 years later, it's become evident that this approach underestimated the will of the Chinese Communist Party to constrain the scope”
2020-06-14 · We Study Billionaires · TIP301: Grant Williams & Luke Gromen Talk Global Macro Economics (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT