How Jerome Powell Destroyed $100 Billion in 8 Minutes

Destroyed around $100 billion off of markets on Friday. We're gonna talk about China. We're gonna talk about the car crisis, used car market right now. It's gonna be a fun call. It's a live stream today, so drop comments if you'd like. Please like this video, promote if you can, and we'll get this thing rolling. So first off, let's actually just pull up the transcript. Very interesting actually on this. So Jerome Powell typically comes and gives a speech, and he sometimes reads the speech, sometimes. Gives the speech, but most of the times reads the speech, but then he answers questions, gives you insights on what he was saying in his speech. Now, this time he just read an 8-minute speech and he got off stage, no Q&A, nothing there, which is, I think, a little bit interesting. You kinda wish they would just speak from the heart, but again, people really read into their words, and so essentially they wanna write 'em out. So here they are. He read this exact speech here, and To summarize, it was actually quick. You guys can read it or listen to it. Very quick speech, being very hawkish on the central bank's job and role to curb inflation. A lot of tough talk from Jerome Powell that their goal is to curb inflation, that they want to— and he said in his own words, let's see if I can find it in here, that it is going to be pain. Okay? They will bring some pain to households and businesses. There are unfortunate costs of reducing inflation, but a failure to restore price stability would mean Far greater pain. A few months ago, soft landing. Nothing soft about this, right? There's a lot of pain apparently coming, and they delivered. Jerome Powell said we're gonna have some pain. Pain happened Friday. Huge market sell-offs today following Monday. Kind of even a little bit lost, and today a huge. I guess we can pull up some tickers here. As of right now, it's 1:04 my time, and so that's three. Eastern. S&P down 1.27, Dow dropping 349 points again today, another percent. NASDAQ down a full percent. Russell 2000, where is that, down 1.6. So about a percent and a half off today. But, you know, big changes here. Apple going to their big announcement of their iPhone next week, down 1.5. AMD 1.8. And just moving down, a lot of blood going on, people repricing in These hikes now sounds like they are going to. He says right here, we're gonna we want to return. He hasn't said this in a long time. We want to return back to two percent. Remember last year when they were saying we want to have it well above two percent to have a two percent long-term average? Well, apparently we are way well beyond the two percent, and now we want to get back to a two percent long-term average there. And there's a lot of tough talk in this conversation, a lot of pain coming forward for this. Now they have the target to do a 75 basis point, which they did in July. Our decision in September meeting will depend on total of incoming data and evolving outlook. A lot of people are pricing in a 50.5 or 50 basis point rate hike in September. And all this, all this does is, again, this is their effort to curb inflation, right? Which is rightfully so. And he, you know, this is asking for just a year ago was stronger Monetary policy. Wanted someone to come in and clean this up. We've had such loose monetary policy for the last three years. Some tight monetary policy might be good. Now, is it too little too late? I don't know. He says again, it is going to be a painful right here. Lot. This is going to be painful for households and businesses, but it is necessary. Anyways, a lot of tough talk in this conversation. Obviously, markets pricing this in. I'm going to try to stop sharing here. Let's see if I can do that. So pricing in what's going on, which is anyways. Kind of interesting. Now, let's put this into real-world consequences of what this means. Now, he says in the talk as well, we will use all tools at our disposal. Now, the Fed has a number of different tools. A few of them, they've already started to play with. Actually, most of them they've already exhausted in some ways. But a couple of things they're doing right now. They, in June, started doing bond issuances and buybacks. So they changed it. So right now, they're issuing bonds $80 billion a month right now is their bond issuance. What does that mean? So when they issue a bond, they actually take out— you're paying for that bond, so they take money from you and it takes money out of the money supply. They essentially give you a piece of paper in exchange for your dollars and it takes money out of the money supply. Okay? Additionally, that's one of their tools. They can set— the most popular one is interest rates. So they started to raise interest rates in June, July, and they've tried to raise rates And again, they want to do it now. So target rate, he says right here, puts it about 2.5 to 2.75 is their target rate. What does that mean for everyday households? So right now I am— I have to— I got to— I bought a property earlier this year. I've got to refinance out of a private money loan into a traditional mortgage. I just got quoted this morning 7.15% for my mortgage. It's about a $510,000 house. My average monthly payment is going to be with taxes and all that stuff. It's going to be about $300 and— excuse me, $3,200. So $3,200 I will pay for a $500,000 house. Very interesting. OK, a year, 2 years ago, same property, same size. I'm paying $1,600, $1,700. Now it's $3,200. Almost double what it was 2.5, 3 years ago for rates. Okay. That is how much you are paying for prices now because of that. Most people buy a property based off of the mortgage payment. If you wanted to get the same mortgage payment, I saw a guy online, they do this math. He's like, if you want to do the same payment as you would have gotten 2 years ago, the price of a $500,000 home would have to be $345,000. Today, assuming a 6% rate, I'm getting a 7% rate, 7.5% because it's a rental property. That's the price. If you had an equilibrium, that's where it would be for people to buy that home with the same payment. Very interesting, right? With how to reprice homes. So right now, obviously, you're seeing declines in pretty much all markets directly affected by interest rates would be a car market, would be a housing market. But also, I think people underestimate the use of interest rates, not just on homes or cars, but across the entire economy. Businesses use a lot of debt. Businesses will take out a line of credit to go buy inventory from Shanghai or Cambodia or China or whatever it is. Maybe they're going to buy— last year, they would have bought 100,000 shirts. They're designed— they're going to buy shirts, clothing, whatever. Now, because their debt service is so high, they're only going to buy 50,000 shirts. 'Cause they gotta pay more for that capital. Cost of capital goes up, you get strained a little bit. You can't do as much as the business expand as quickly as well. This affects every single business on, essentially on planet Earth. Then, you know, whether it's your business or a supplier of your business, things start getting tighter. So again, a lot of tough talk from Jerome Powell. Market's trying to reprice this in. Now crypto has been interesting. So let me pull up crypto here. Very interesting. So crypto took a dive over the weekend. Our fund actually bought up a ton of juicy stuff over the weekend. We were very excited. Here's CoinMarketCap. Let's just look at today. Today though, quite a reversal. And yesterday, Ethereum up 3%, Bitcoin up 1%. So a little bit of gain, but still below $20,000. Broke through that $20,000 threshold again. Had this false bull rally as of recent. It's pretty interesting. Ethereum has been just all over the place. Let's see if we can just see this chart here. Yeah, Ethereum has been— now, Ethereum's got a few different things going for it. Let's go to the month chart. So peaked the last month almost $2,000, right above $2,000 there. And then today, you know, over the weekend, had some pretty adjustments, then a pretty, you know, good little run-up here, and then now back repricing. So now Ethereum's got Ethereum 2.0 coming out sometime in the future. Vlad is very behind that. So Ethereum's a very interesting play right now. Let's look at Bitcoin though. Huge drop-off, right? Major, major sell-off. This is this morning. Boom, all the way down. In the green as of yesterday, did kind of well anyways. People again repricing in all sorts of stuff. You can see this across most markets though right now of this bearish activity. Now, what's interesting about this and what Powell says, let me go back to Powell's speech here. Okay. He says this, which I think is very interesting. Now, this could be the other side of the coin. If the public expects inflation— oh wait, let me zoom in. You guys can see this better. Here we go. Boom. Let me go down. All right. If the public expects that inflation will remain low and stable over time, then absent major shocks, it likely will. Unfortunately, the same is true of expectations of high volatile inflation during the 1970s As inflation climbed, the anticipation of high inflation became entrenched in the economic decision-making of households and businesses. The more inflation rose, the more people came to expect it remained high, and they built that belief into wage and pricing decisions. As former Chair Paul Volcker, who was in the 1970s, did this, he broke the back of the Great Inflation. Inflation feeds in part on itself. So part of the job of returning to a more stable and more productive economy must be to break the grip of inflationary expectations. Pretty interesting. So in this talk, he talks about breaking the back of inflation and ways to do this, but also breaking the expected inflation. Now, people, I would argue people today are way more financially literate than they were in the 1970s or '80s, especially with YouTube and content like you're watching right now. Case in point, you're listening to some kid tell you about all this kind of stuff. The average survey, I think it was 65% of Americans believe we were in a recession last month, and most believe we're in high inflationary times. In fact, they had been following the inflation number very quickly. Most people back in the '80s kind of got the concept of it, but weren't following the numbers, following the CPI. People today are, I think, way more financially literate than they were back then. And so I think what Powell's trying to do here is say, you know what, we need to break expectations. We need to break the back of inflation. Now, the big question comes down to what will they actually do? Will they actually— all this tough talk with inflation, will they actually follow through with it? Now, as far as next month, I think they will. I think they will raise rates by 50 basis points. Let's call it— who knows exactly the number? Let's call it 50 basis points. And maybe if we get another lower CPI number, that might be enough. And a lot of tough talk usually You have a lot of tough talk when you don't have anything backing it, right? That's what you do. A lot of tough talk in this thing. Maybe there's not much backing it for what he wants to do. I don't know. A lot of people are trying to price in. It's so funny. I sit down and listen to a lot of people. So I just, I mention a lot of bearish things about the market, things that are going down. It's bad. We're gonna have this painful time period. I also hear very bullish things from people. So it's funny. You do all this research, you end up with both. I'll share some bullish things. I've talked to some stock guys. They're saying we're gonna see all-time highs. By Q1 and Q2 of next year. All-time highs in the stock market. There's all this capital that's selling off, but where's it going to go? Yeah, some of it obviously goes to pay back old debts maybe, but maybe it's just sitting on the sidelines and people are going to say, you know what? We got to get back in because things are still— inflation is still happening. There's asset inflation and real inflation. We need to get back in the markets. And the other thing that's bullish is the election. Right now we have midterms. Biden just essentially did— so funny. It's been, you know, I try not to criticize politicians directly, but it's just interesting that Biden comes out and says, we're not in a recession. We've got a great economy, a great labor market. We've got the best economy ever. We're not in a recession. Even though we've had 2 quarters of economic decline, we're not in a recession. However, a month later, They use executive powers, an executive order, because we're in an emergency, an economic emergency, to forgive student loans. $10,000 or $20,000. If you make under $125,000, you can qualify for these loans, which is a very inflationary thing to do. And he's doing it by the powers of we're in an emergency, we're in an economic emergency here, and it's an executive order. I need to do this. Congress didn't pass that. Other people didn't pass that. It was an executive order. And so it's like, dude, what story are you telling? We have the greatest economy ever. Apparently it's not in a recession, but also it's so bad that we need to forgive student loans and bribe voters to vote Democrat in November. I think it's very inconsistent from the White House and central bank together. If we had such a great economy, you wouldn't need to do this. Now, what people don't understand is you give away those student loans, okay? $10,000 or $20,000 forgiven. That is, that goes back and whether they're forgiven or back up on, people feel this less of a burden. They're not making payments. We also aren't. There's a moratorium on making payments for student loans. What does that do? It gives the consumer more capital in their pocket. And what do they do? They then, because they have more capital, they can bid up scarce resources. So it's on the demand side of inflation. They have supply side and demand side inflation, which they talk about. So the supply and demand curve, I'm going to use my hands here, but they've been saying this for the last 2 years. We have supply-side inflation, meaning it's not because we printed money that there's inflation. It's because we can't— through COVID, we couldn't ship stuff. And so because we can't ship stuff, there's only so many consumers bidding on scarce resources. And because they're bidding on them, they get bid up. And that's why prices are going up because there's less supply of certain goods, which makes sense. The other side though is demand-side inflation, meaning maybe there's just as many iPhones as there was before or products or whatever on eBay. Think about eBay and eBay auction, same number of products. But the consumer has more money to spend and they're going to bid up homes. They're going to bid up cars. They're going to bid up pretty much any other asset class there is. They're going to bid them up because they have more money in their pockets to bid them up. Hence, you have inflation. Okay? So supply side, demand side inflation. And actually, Jerome Powell talks about this in his speech that central banks, that they are now— people are pricing in a long-term inflation. Forever they've been saying it was transitory. They were denying it. And now they're saying, people are pricing in long-term inflation and it's the job of Central banks around the world. This is your job to curb inflation and have a standard inflationary measure. It's so anyways, finally admitting what they're at. And anyways, a lot of tough talk here on Friday again. Markets repricing this in. He says this: When inflation is persistently high, households and businesses must pay close attention and incorporate inflation into their economic. Decisions. Let me just share my screen here so you can see it. Can you see it there? There we go. Boom. One one useful insight is how actual inflation may affect expectations about its future path is based on the concept of rational inattention. When inflation is persistently high, households and businesses must pay close attention. and incorporate inflation into their economic decisions. When inflation is low and stable, they are free to focus their attention elsewhere. Former Chairman Alan Greenspan put it this way, for all practical purposes, price stability means that expected changes in the average price level are small enough and gradual enough that they do not materially enter businesses and household financial decisions. Which is, I think this was, by the way, I actually liked this talk a lot. I think it was really good. I wish we had a Q&A to talk about it, but I like the tough talk. I like, we'll see if he backs it up. That we need to put a grip on inflationary expectations here, and then actually let me scroll up a little bit. Central banks, he says the first lesson that central banks can and should take responsible responsibility for delivering low and stable inflation. Man, it's been a long time to get him to say this. I mean, but again, I think I I it's funny. I my dad. Has taught me this, and I love this concept. He gives this analogy of the dumb waiter, and I love this analogy because it makes a lot of sense. Now, I've criticized a few things about the Fed here and all that stuff, but I want to summarize this in one analogy that I think is very important for everyone to understand with politics, with government, with big organizations. So this is the example. This is my dad. By the way, my dad runs, you know, co-founder of a huge, massive fund, just recently retired. He spoke at our last event. Brilliant, brilliant dude. And he says this, he says, Bridger, imagine we're at a restaurant. And let's say, Bridger, I'm a waiter, you're a waiter. And we are doing, we do tips every night, we're doing change, we're giving out stuff. And I, Bridger, I'm just an idiot. I just, I'm really bad at change, I'm bad at math. I have a hard time getting the correct change. People give me a $20 and I always give them the wrong change. And people, over the course of a year, all the other people that work at the restaurant, like you guys, are like, man, Bridger's just, he's just bad at math. You tell everybody, sorry, this guy, he's just bad at math. Just, he's a little slow. We'll get you the right change. You always fix the change for me and stuff. And I said, OK, yeah, thank you so much. And all that good stuff. OK, I'm just bad at math. However, we do an audit of my last 100 transactions where I got the change wrong, where I messed up the change. You audit my 100 transactions and you find out that 95% of those transactions, I gave the change wrong, but it was in my favor. It actually benefited me. I took away a little bit more money. And because it should be 50/50, 50% of the time it's more to the customer, 50% of the time it's more to me, but 95% of the time it's more to me. And you look at this audit and you go, huh, is Bridger really bad at math? Or are we the idiots for believing that he's bad at math? Who's the real idiot? Are you the idiot or am I the idiot? Because I do the change and I end up taking home more money every single night because I'm bad at math and I can't do the change right. Am I the idiot or are you the idiot for believing me when I told you I was bad at math? OK? Does that make sense? I think this is a great analogy for the Fed, central banks, the White House, whoever it is. They say stupid stuff all the time. And it's like, there's a blatant thing. Let's just talk about it. It's obvious. Are we— are they the idiots? And we go— and people online criticize, man, Jerome Powell is such an idiot. Doesn't know what he's doing in the White House, blah, blah, blah. Are they the idiots though? Or are we the idiots? They have the most resources on planet Earth, the most economists. They've got thousands of people working for them, giving them data and all the stuff, all the resource, all the information, most, you know, informed people on planet Earth. Are we the idiot or are they the idiot? Now, I understand they say one thing and they'll do something else. I get it. But you got to look into what are they actually doing and trying to accomplish. And these are the smartest people on planet Earth. OK? These are really— I really think, not the smartest, but some of the smartest, most informed people on planet Earth. I really hesitate when people just call them an idiot outright. They're not idiots. They are smart. Now, they might sound dumb, but they probably have a deeper plan or deeper agenda, in my opinion. So with that being said, I think Jerome Powell's tough talk, a lot of good talk. I think it's some repricing just happened. I think they're going to raise rates next month. However, I don't know. I think they're trying to. Have tough talks so that people like us discuss and say, you know what? They are breaking the back of inflation. And I could see this right before midterm elections, early November. We have broken the back of inflation. We accomplished it. We've you know we had this big monster and the the current administration, the current people, we did it. I could totally see that and having this public campaign inflation's coming down. It's been awesome and rolling right into the midterm elections. Could you not see that? Right? Now, anyways, I could go on and on about scenarios, but I just think I could see this happening in the midterms, this tough talk of inflation. They want to break the expectations of inflation, like I mentioned. And hopefully the real, real inflation that is really actually happening that they denied all of last year, now they're admitting it, and maybe they can break the back of inflation in a couple of months, you know? And we're back to all-time highs by Q2 of next year. That totally could happen. And maybe the other side of it is that they don't break the back of inflation or they go, they have to really work hard at it. And it puts our economy into a, like he says, a painful period where we hit bottom and bottom and bottom and bounce and are in a deep recession early next year. So the picture can be painted both ways. I think it's very interesting. What can happen? Now let me pull up the chat. I want to hear from you guys a little bit. What do you guys think? What do you think happens to crypto during a recession? I have no clue, to be honest. I can give you my opinion though. It's funny, people that give predictions, I just think are usually just— anyways. But I'll give you probabilities. I think crypto, we've seen over the last year, has been very closely associated with the current big tech stocks, right? That's, you know, that's what's been going on. Now, with crypto though, it's interesting. I personally, crypto could be manipulated by the US government and the Fed. I think that's total possibility, total possibility. And they wanna keep it in a cage while they build their own currency there. Again, I don't know how it would perform. Individual crypto in general though, as a whole blockchain technology, I believe, Regardless of recession will be on the rise. There are one in—I was speaking with Kevin O'Leary on stage two months ago, and he brought this up. He said one in four developers are going into blockchain technology. One in four coders, programmers coming out of school, moving jobs are going into blockchain and Web three. One in four. You don't get one in four of something of engineers going to an industry and not really good. Products come out of that. Usually people get— things happen, right? It grows like crazy. So 1 in 4 software engineers going into blockchain and Web3 I think is crucial. And we're going to get some really amazing tech coming out of the blockchain space I believe over the next couple of years. So with that backing it as a real thing, now the price of it is just buyers and sellers, but the backing technology will add actually great companies and tech that use crypto or have a coin that's issued. I think that's— utility-based coins are awesome. How is Ugly Unicorn Fund doing? We just posted about it yesterday, actually. The August 30th report just came out. We just published our results. Since August 30th, I'll show you right here. Here it is. You guys can go to my Instagram and check it out. Since August 30th, Bitcoin is -24.86%. This is as of August. So it's June 1st, August 15th when we started. Ugly Unicorn was positive 3.48%. So we beat Bitcoin by something like 28%, 29%. We beat Bitcoin. Huge gap in how we beat Bitcoin. This is pretty cool. We've done very well. We're positive right now as for our fund. Bitcoin's on a cliff. It was on a cliff since we started and we've done really well. So we're very excited. So would you think buying the dip is a good or bad idea? I'll just tell you what I do right now. I have been buying this entire year. Every time stuff drops, I buy. I buy, I buy. I don't know when the bottom little moment, the correct moment is to buy. I've bought all year. I dollar cost average into a lot of stuff 'cause I just don't know the exact day to buy it. Whenever there's a big sale day though, a big red day, yeah, let's buy some. Let's scoop some up. I bought a real estate property this year. I bought one last December. Well, I might even buy one by the end of the year again, another real estate property. Stock market, I've been buying lots of equities. Lots of indexes throughout this year. And our fund, Ugly Unicorn, we've bought a lot since June. Every red day, we buy. We buy a ton. We put limit orders and we just buy, buy, buy. We buy the bottom and we stake them and we earn yield on them. We're not a long-short fund. We're not trading every day, but we buy just— we buy good dips. So when's the dip the best day? I don't know. It's funny, Kevin O'Leary as well on stage, and I talked to him, he just— he said this, 'cause everyone asked him about a recession. He goes, man, everyone is so certain we're in a recession. Everybody. Everyone I talk to is 100%. I talked to my lady that cuts my hair, the grocery store guy. They all we're all in a recession apparently. He goes, "I just the fact that everyone's calling a recession just makes me not want to think we're in a recession." So now are we gonna have repricing markets for sure? You have interest rates rising like crazy. Real estate is already being repriced. Cars are already being repriced. Businesses some businesses are are kind of in the middle on repricing. You know they were now. inflationary pressures. Now they're hitting deflationary pressures and kind of ends up in equilibrium, which is what the Fed wants. And so now we might have a China debt crisis happening. If you guys watch, I put a video out last week on the China debt crisis. I think it was— I think it's— I still watch that every single day. I think that could be— Now, so economy like we're in right now, I think can be pretty level up or down, kind of just moves in waves. Until there's a black, what they call a black swan event or moment. So, if you guys ever heard that concept, it's just this moment that no one predicted that just like the Lehman Brothers was a black swan event. No one predicted Lehman Brothers were going to collapse. And then all of a sudden, everyone triggered— triggers all these other things. China debt crisis could be a huge black swan event right now, triggering a major windfall through all property development in China, bondholders of Chinese companies, Right now, the U.S. is looking at auditing to delist a bunch of Chinese tech stocks. I think the Chinese economy could come crashing down by the end of the year. Could be a big black swan event. And if that happens, it catalysts everything else that's on the fence down as well. So as of right now, yeah, I see this rocky going on. But if there's a black swan moment, which is cliché of me to say, like if there's a crazy thing, I think that thing could be China. Another big black swan event could be the used car market right now. Andrei Jikh put out an incredible video on used car, the used car market. Go check it out. Very, very cool what he put out. I'll give him a huge shout out. I think it was a cool video talking about, I'll kind of explain it to you though. He says, I think it's 12% of all cars right now are 30 days past due their payments. That's like tripled over the last 3 months. In New York, it's about 25% of all cars are in default. in New York. Utah, actually the state I'm in, is the lowest state. It's about 4% of cars are in default. People are not making payments on their cars. They're going up like crazy as defaults and repo companies that are repossessing cars are through the roof. They're busier than they've ever been. I think it's going to be crazy. From whom to raise your first PE fund, specifically in ESG domain? There's a lot of groups that want to raise. It's probably a longer conversation, but we in our Black Card group, So that's our top coaching group. We have a bunch of people doing ESG funds, big institutions, family offices, tons of different capital allocators are wanting to deploy into ESG. Now make sure what you're doing is actually ESG. Don't do other, like off the side stuff. Make sure you're actually doing ESG and it qualifies. They've made it more strict to qualify as an ESG-based fund, but really cool. There's a lot of people. We have placement agents, all sorts of people that we connect you with to try to get you in. to people that want ESG funds. Yeah. Are the private equity markets getting taken off right now or waiting with cash to buy in this year or early next year? At least my experience with people in private equity and VC, some are getting their teeth kicked in and others are so excited. Finally, prices are coming down a little bit. It's a little more normal of a market. I see a lot of private equity companies actually very excited and doing more deal flow right now. And not, maybe not right now, but activity happening with plans to close on deals end of year into early next year. It's a lot of dry powder. I think it's like $500 billion of dry powder in private equity, meaning it's capital that they can deploy. I think for a lot of managers last 2 years, like, man, it's just so high. It's so high. I can't deploy. And now things have come down. They've repriced. And finally, they feel like they okay, we can buy now. And so what happens is all this money still flows in and everything does great. So the other thing that's a bullish indicator—I've gone bearish. This is so funny. I go bearish and bullish, bearish and bullish. I end up in the middle. A bearish indicator or bullish indicator. So a good indicator for the real estate markets—an up indicator. So many cash buyers. All these cash buyers are coming to the table. You had a huge home shortage and still cash buyers are at the table. So they're still buying, still scooping up. Even with interest rates going up, it really just prices out people that are poor and people that need a big mortgage. But the cash buyers that still need rental properties, still need depreciation, all that kind of stuff, are still buying. And so that's the other thing. It's like, hey, yeah, it's going to slow down. Things are going to become more normal, but it's not going to collapse. It's not going to fall to the floor. So it's going to reprice a little bit. So anyways, it's just funny how you go back and forth on economic data. What kind of fund can I start off with? Not much experience. So great, great question. I would say if you want to get in the fund game, go learn everything you can about funds. We have a free course. I think I put it below on this link. Go get our free course. Learn about funds. We have another course that's $2,000 called our Mastermind Core Program. I think it's awesome. It's got 200 videos. Just learn, learn all you can, and then be around other people running funds and hear what they're doing. Get insights and ideas from what they're doing, and maybe you'll just partner with one of them, or you'll get an idea of like 3 or 4 different funds and you go, oh man, I could do an in-between. And we talk about blue ocean, red ocean strategy. You have a blue ocean opportunity where you're doing arbitrage, a True Blue example, something like that, and you can come and really grab an awesome fund. I would first learn is my first what I tell people. Just learn, learn the game. This is a long game. The world of funds—it's not a get rich quick scheme. Okay? This is a long-term game. Come and educate and learn everything you can about yourself. So watch my videos. Go. We have a free course. We have an updated, a bigger course if you guys want to get that one. And then if you want to join our like in person, we have our black card group. So our black card group is our top tier group. You get to come. We're actually going to Mexico next month, and we're gonna have a fun time. We're in person. We get to hang out. We do all sorts of fun stuff. 15 coaches that give you ideas and you get to meet other people, which is pretty fun. Yeah, pretty wild. I know interest rates, you know, affect the entire world. And now here's the other thing. Last thing I'm gonna leave you guys with. This is pretty crazy. So back to the dumb waiter. If you guys have been watching this whole thing, I gave that analogy of the dumb waiter, okay? The dumb, me, I do the change wrong. Right now, Jerome Powell, right, is raising rates, obviously to curb inflation, fight inflation, be tough on inflation. Two things, though, are major right now. Number one, the U.S. dollar is the strongest it's been in like 20 years. We are beating the euro, the yen. Every other currency is way behind. The U.S. dollar is killing it. We have we have created like $20 trillion. And the U.S. dollar is still— people want it. The demand is up, which is so just crazy. That's the power of the U.S. dollar. People are like, oh, the reserve currency is dying. No, it's not. It's not dying. Look at the economic data, people. The U.S. dollar is above euros right now. It's above euros. OK? So this is— that's number one, crazy thing that's happening. Number two, we have a pseudo-war going on with Russia and Ukraine. You have China, and I did a whole video on China, right? Their economy, I think, is very pressured right now. I think very, very pressured. It's the reason they want to outlash and get Taiwan so quickly because it's a huge economic boost if they can grab Taiwan. Typically, if you read any economics book, and Ray Dalio says this, typically economic wars are fought long before physical wars. Economic wars are long fought before physical wars. World War II, Japan was economically squeezed. They went out. Germany was squeezed economically. They went out and had World War II, right? Right now, China, I believe, is very squeezed, and this is why they want Taiwan. Now, they have a lot of debt outstanding. China is one of— they did the Belt and Road Initiative, have over $1 trillion outstanding, and I think it's about 10% is in default. So they've lent money to Cambodia and The Congo and Kazakhstan, all these countries that are not paying them back. Sri Lanka not paying them back. Russia not paying them back. Going into default on all these loans. Chinese companies are the most indebted companies on planet Earth. They have the most debt of any other company group on planet Earth. If you were Jerome Powell and the Fed in the U.S. and you wanted to destabilize Russia and China right now, Without World War III, what would you do? You would fight an economic war. Maybe it's a pseudo-war through Ukraine, but maybe you keep raising rates and you pressure— that raises— a lot of times will raise rates for their currency. At least they have dollars owed back in US dollars. It raises all those rates. All the debt service is higher. It puts who they've borrowed to in default. Or vice versa, if they borrow it, it puts them in default and it puts even more pressure on China's economy to collapse. Are we the idiots or are they the idiots? Now, I don't know if that's actually happening, but I'm just saying that's something that could be happening right now. They want to put a lot of pressure on China and Russia and destabilize these 2 communist countries. Maybe you keep raising rates, you have stricter monetary policy, you put 3 aircraft carriers around Taiwan to block trade. You put a trade war that Trump did with China and a lot of tariffs and you squeeze their economy, which is— and then you let it just pop. It's this huge Ponzi scheme happening with the Chinese bubble. Again, watch my other China video. Maybe you do that if you're in power right now. Again, I don't think they're the idiots. So we got to figure out what they're doing. There's 3— the 3 rules of investing. Don't fight the Fed. Don't fight the Fed. Don't fight the Fed. Okay. Those are the 3 rules of investing. This could be happening. All right. Y'all are amazing. Please like this video if you can. It pushes up in the algorithm. If you guys can drop a comment, it just helps push it up on YouTube. You guys are amazing. I think it's fun to talk about stuff. Let me know what you think. Check out our other videos. Let me know comments if you guys have other topics or things you want to talk about. I'm Bridger Pennington. Check out our links below. You guys are amazing. Please like the video if you can. I don't know. I guess it does. I don't know. People say it goes up. It like pushes the video up. I don't know if it does that. But anyways, I guess it does. You guys are amazing. And I'll see you guys later. Thanks, Bridger.