Podcasts about t bill

KEEPING THE FAITH WHILE FIGHTING FOR A SOLARTOPIAN GREEN-POWERED EARTH WHILE FINALLY BURYING THE NUKE POWER INDUSTRY We start our GREEP Zoom #221 with DR. NANCY NIPARKO & her exhortation to keep the faith & not lose hope, however difficult the times may be. The FAR OUT documentary film is endorsed by DR. RUTH STRAUSS who also demands the return of Abrego Garcia after he's been disappeared to El Salvador. The name of this terror victim is shouted out by MYLA RESON with the warning that this could happen to any and all of us at the whim of Donald Trump. ON ENERGY: From DOROTHY REIK we hear about SB540 which would open the door to new nukes & to kill the ability of California to control its own energy supplies. The legendary KEVIN KAMPS warns of the gargantuan subsidies proposed to insanely re-start Michigan's Palisades despite the exponential cost overruns already with us, and despite disturbing reports of an epidemic of cancer in a nearby golf club, indicating major radiation releases from the nearby reactor; there are “start dates” for nuclear disasters, he said, but there are no end dates. We're reminded by MIKE HERSH that a major driving force for the “civilian” reactor industry is the on-going production materials for atomic weapons. The radioactive insanity as spread over New Mexico is exposed by MYLA RESON. The horrors of the radioactive fallout from Trinity, the first atomic bomb test, has studied in part by JOE MANGANO of the Radiation & Health Project, who wonders what kind of health survey could be supported by Robert F. Kennedy's federal agency; RFK, Jr's uncle, the late US Senator Ted Kennedy, long ago advocated such a study. Joe tells us of a study involving 16 of the oldest US nukes & found a clear correlation between cancer death rates and early and later plant operations. California's 2018 master plan to phase out the two reactors at Diablo & phase in a renewable energy base is laid wholly at the feed of Gov. Gavin Newsom. Kevin Kamps tells us that at least 10% of the ratepayers in Georgia's Vogtle rate region can't pay their bills to keep their lights on because of the huge charges coming from the two new nukes. We then take the plunge into the stock market and the insider manipulations of Donald Trump's tariffs, whose announcements let his friends and family sell and buy at obscene levels of grift. We also delve into the little-discussed T-Bills/government bonds that have stabilized the US and global economies. The loss of confidence in T-bills could signal a death knell for the American economy as reflected by the global loss of confidence in the US economy and the Dollar. “Women Rising Radio” host LYNN FEINERMAN wonders if we are thus headed into a Depression…or are we already there? The importance of the bond market, says MIKE HERSH, is valued by very powerful moneyed interest whose presence in T-Bill markets can decide the fate of the global economy, especially as the US “credit rating” is being destroyed. The kinds of insider manipulations available to Trump have been worth incalculable grift to friends and family on the Trump Rolodex. Kissinger's “Mad Nixon” theory is raised by TATANKA BRICCA as we see maximum currency manipulation among those who own the bulk of global wealth. TATANKA warns further that the oligarchs want to cauterize our hearts & our souls, which can only be defeated with empathy and compassion. The California Fair Elections Act SB42 would repeal the ban on public financing of election campaigns, neutralizing the power of America's oligarchs. The documentary movie called “the Encampments” about Columbia's University's investments is introduced by DR. NANCY NIPARKO.  

Pierre Person and Adli Takkal Bataille are the CoFounders of Usual. In this episode, we review the grand vision behind Usual to rebuild Tether, but one that is fully owned and governed by its users onchain. Although Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC) generated over $10B in revenue in 2023, none of this wealth is shared with the users who contribute to their success. Meanwhile, Usual sees the opportunity to reimagine Tether as a permissionless, decentralized stablecoin called USD0, along with a product for capturing T-Bill yield called USD0++. With $240M TVL in its first few months, we ask the CoFounders why they're the right team to build it and how we can get involved. ------

This week's blogpost - https://bahnsen.co/3M8Yj0S T-Bill and Chill vs. Market Returns: A Game Film Analysis In this episode of the Thoughts on Money Podcast, the hosts Trevor Cummings, Sean Latimer, and Blaine Carver discuss the 'T Bill and Chill' investment strategy and its opportunity costs over the past two years compared to the stock market's performance. They draw parallels between reviewing investment game film and analyzing critical decisions in NFL football, notably the Seattle Seahawks' controversial play in the 2015 Super Bowl. The hosts argue for having a structured investment framework and using financial planning to enhance investment returns while managing risk tolerance and behavioral biases. They also underscore the importance of patience and long-term strategies in achieving significant financial rewards. 00:00 Welcome to the Thoughts on Money Podcast 00:13 NFL Talk: The Infamous Seahawks vs. Patriots Super Bowl 01:01 T-Bill and Chill: A Financial Strategy Revisited 01:24 The Importance of Game Film in Investing 05:54 Analyzing the T-Bill and Chill Strategy 07:37 The Real Cost of Missing Market Upswings 10:12 Balancing Risk and Return in Financial Planning 16:08 Balancing Growth and Spending 17:18 Risk Tolerance and Financial Planning 18:07 The Role of Advisors 19:49 Investment Strategies and Market Conditions 22:16 Consistency in Investment Philosophy 23:33 Behavioral Aspects of Investing 29:26 The Importance of Patience 32:37 Final Thoughts and Listener Engagement Links mentioned in this episode: http://thoughtsonmoney.com http://thebahnsengroup.com

Mike on what the AAA credit warning ignores. Politicians seem to be happy about it. With T-Bill yields falling, KeyStone Financial's Aaron Dunn will tell you about a secure dividend that you'd need a 10.5% T-Bill to match its after-tax yield. Plus, Mike on the Canada Pension Plan's high cost and low returns in the Shocking Stat of the Week. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this week's episode Slater Heil from Blueberry joins the show to talk about Blueberry and Bloom, two DeFi protocols which are brining undercollateralized leverage and RWA yields to DeFi. DeFi Dave and Kiet interviewed Slater about his goal to be a prime brokerage, T-Bill yields, the Blueberry Token and TBY'sI~~~~Subscribe to the Flywheel mailing list: https://flywheeldefi.com~~~~Have ETH but don't know what to do with it? Swap it to FrxETH for the highest staking yields in crypto.https://app.frax.finance/frxeth/mint~~~~Calling all threadoors, researchers, and dashboard creators

Tom welcomes Michael Oliver back from Momentum Structural Analysis to discuss the economy's past year and its potential future direction. Michael highlights that although a significant number of "soft jobs" were created, the overall growth remained relatively flat and not as robust as portrayed in the mainstream media. When analyzing the real estate market, including REITs, Michael finds that they are also facing challenges. Looking at his momentum charts, he observes clear signs of declining momentum in the S&P500, which could lead to a substantial correction. Contrary to popular belief, Michael argues that rate cuts are not bullish for the stock market, as they signal underlying concerns to investors. If the S&P500 drops below the 4500 level, further downside may be expected. In Michael's view, the Fed will likely cut rates before June to regain control over the rapidly fluctuating T-Bill markets, considering they have limited influence on the long-end of the market. Michael also discusses the relationship between gold and silver. While gold often lags behind, it can experience rapid increases in value, which silver tends to follow. Currently, silver is underperforming in comparison to gold, but Michael believes it may enter a new trading range and eventually outperform gold based on historical behavior. In addition to economic factors, Michael emphasizes that the market is not adequately pricing in the uncertainties surrounding the 2024 election. A tumultuous period with little compromise from either side is expected, potentially leading to increased political polarization and a higher likelihood of violence from both ends. Michael even suggests that the possibility of states seceding is on the rise. With these factors in mind, he anticipates that a significant event will likely occur before the elections. Time Stamp References:0:00 - Introduction0:32 - The Past Year & Metrics3:59 - Consumer Spending (XLY)6:48 - Real Estate & GDP/ISM Data8:43 - Fed, S&P500, & Investors14:58 - Bear Markets & Crashing?19:08 - T-Bonds & TLT Charts28:03 - Gold & Silver 2020-202433:43 - Silver Vs. Gold Spreads49:28 - Politics & Market Trends58:23 - Wrap Up Talking Points From This Episode The S&P500 is showing signs of declining momentum, which may lead to a significant market correction. Silver is currently underperforming compared to gold, but historical behavior suggests it may outperform in the future. The uncertainties surrounding the 2024 election are not adequately priced into the market. Guest Links:Website: http://www.olivermsa.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/Oliver_MSAAmazon Book: https://tinyurl.com/y2roa7p5Free Report email: michaeloliver@olivermsa.com Email MSA above, and they will send you this week's report for free, which covers many of the topics from this interview. J. Michael Oliver entered the financial services industry in 1975 on the Futures side, joining E.F. Hutton's International Commodity Division, headquartered in New York City's Battery Park. He studied under David Johnston, head of Hutton's Commodity Division and Chairman of the COMEX. In the 1980s, Mike began to develop his proprietary momentum-based method of technical analysis. He learned early on that orthodox price chart technical analysis left many unanswered questions and too often deceived those who trusted in price chart breakouts, support/resistance, and so forth. In 1987 Mike technically anticipated and caught the Crash. It was then that he decided to develop his structural momentum tools into a full analytic methodology. In 1992, the Financial VP and head of Wachovia Bank's Trust Department asked Mike to provide soft dollar research to Wachovia. Within a year, Mike shifted from brokerage to full-time technical analysis. He is also the author of The New Libertarianism: Anarcho-Capitalism.

Show Notes:Tweet from Joey Politano -https://twitter.com/JosephPolitano/status/1734570072176251320Article by Amy Arnott, CFA “Should you T-Bill and Chill?” - https://www.morningstar.com/portfolios/should-you-t-bill-chillResearch from Charlie Bilello -https://twitter.com/charliebilello/status/1735785477586723024Tweet from Jonathan Ferro on Fed Speak Confusion -https://twitter.com/FerroTV/status/1735658977176797682Bullish on Bonds Tweet from Gunjan Banerji -https://twitter.com/GunjanJS/status/1737116673344405692Article by Matt Baisden “11 different types of retirement plans” - https://www.plancorp.com/blog/retirement-plan-types?

(12/8/23) Markets and the Fed are at odds in interest rate expectations; AMD vs NVDIA in the chip wars; why markets are pulling back: Setting up for a Santa Claus rally. Will Jobs numbers line-up with market expectations? T-Bill & Chill? Putting cash to work in a 5% world. Bankers are betting you're going to be lazy; what will you do when rates go back down? What will be the next "Magnificent-7?" S&P predictions for 2024; how we make the sausage;. Healthcare costs in retirement: The value of an HSA. THe Medicare enrollment maze. End of year chores; charitable contributions & Long Term Care; new rules for 529 Plans: What if the money isn't used? Moving money to Roth IRA (within limits). SEG-1: Will Jobs Numbers Line-up w Market Expectations? SEG-2: Putting Cash to Work in a 5% World SEG-3: What are the Next Magnificent-7? SEG-4: Dealing w Healthcare Expenses in Retirement Hosted by RIA Advisors' Senior Financial Advisors Danny Ratliff, CFP, & Jonathan Penn, CFP Produced by Brent Clanton, Executive Producer -------- Watch today's show on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=442R_6H1Iac&list=PLVT8LcWPeAugpcGzM8hHyEP11lE87RYPe&index=1&t=1s -------- The latest installment of our new feature, Before the Bell, "What the VIX is Saying" is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfoZlCvRcrY&list=PLwNgo56zE4RAbkqxgdj-8GOvjZTp9_Zlz&index=1 ------- Our previous show is here: "#Bitcoin Back in the Headlines" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El5aJGlGB1Y&list=PLVT8LcWPeAugpcGzM8hHyEP11lE87RYPe&index=1&t=3s -------- Articles Mentioned in this Show: "The Fed Pauses: What Comes Next?" https://realinvestmentadvice.com/the-fed-pauses-what-comes-next/ "Wall Street Analysts Are Optimistic For 2024" https://realinvestmentadvice.com/wall-street-analysts-are-optimistic-for-2024/ "Recessionary Indicators Update. Soft Landing Or Worse?" https://realinvestmentadvice.com/recessionary-indicators-update-soft-landing-or-worse/ ------- Get more info & commentary: https://realinvestmentadvice.com/newsletter/ -------- Register for our next Candid Coffee: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/6316958366519/WN_jCrzdX9uSJSrg5MBN5Oy8g ------- SUBSCRIBE to The Real Investment Show here: http://www.youtube.com/c/TheRealInvestmentShow -------- Visit our Site: https://www.realinvestmentadvice.com Contact Us: 1-855-RIA-PLAN -------- Subscribe to SimpleVisor: https://www.simplevisor.com/register-new -------- Connect with us on social: https://twitter.com/RealInvAdvice https://twitter.com/LanceRoberts https://www.facebook.com/RealInvestmentAdvice/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/realinvestmentadvice/ #InvestingAdvice #InterestRates #FedPause #BondMarket #Jobs #FederalReserve #MagnificentSeven #NVDIA #AMD #ChipWars #Retirement #Healthcare #HSA #Markets #Money #Investing

Peter Higgins talks with us about high yield bonds and the next credit event. If you are not worried about the next credit event, it could clean you out. Here are some topics we discussed. • When to Invest Amidst Market Volatility? Now: The “power of the coupon” pays investors for an early arrival, not for being fashionably late.  • Generational Market Opportunity: “Income” is back in fixed income and investors benefit from an extremely attractive entry point now after historically poor performance in 2022.  • “Sticky” Inflation Prolongs Higher Rates: The seesaw rate moves of the past have ceased for a bit as sticky inflation has kept interest rates higher for longer.  • Don't Fight The Fed: The Fed's target rate remains higher than market expectations based on the Fed Fund Futures implied interest rate, so why are markets fighting the Fed and what does this mean for investors?  • Recession or not? AND, if so, then when? Historically reliable barometers for pending recessions are diverging, but Peter can help read the tea leaves for investors on the odds of a recession.  • Implications for the Yield Curve: An inverted yield curve typically signifies recession, but Peter sees significant distortions from the recent Debt Ceiling noise and inflationary data.  • Spread vs. Yield: Credit spreads aren't pricing in recessionary risk, so investors must be more fixated on high all-in yields.  • Rollover risk: At 5.39%, six-month Treasury Bills are tempting, but that simple strategy puts investors at risk of lower rates with future T Bill reinvestments. And they won't capture the capital price appreciation gained from longer duration bond funds. Peter can explain the math.  • Investment Grade Sweet Spot: With recession likely and spread to widen, investment grade slash/yield ratings (BBB/BB) provide some protection from further spread widening. But they are also exceptionally high yield (+/- 6%) over several year on high quality bonds where there's very little default risk with investment grade corporate bonds. For more information, visit the show notes at https://moneytreepodcast.com/next-credit-event-peter-higgins

Sarah Muir and Alan Higgins look at how markets normally respond to major geopolitical events and what's different this time. Plus could a bearish consensus be a contrarian indicator for equity bulls and the pros and cons of ‘T Bill and Chill'.

Market Cycles, Risk, & Ben Graham's Intelligent Investor - Finance Lessons from BRT BRT S04 EP29 (192) 7-23-2023   What We Learned This Week: ·    Mean Reversion & Market Cycles – Asset prices do not go up forever, but rather fluctuate Assets – Valuations have gone down, forces Investors to evaluate the worth of an Asset, Risk / Reward analysis, no more ‘free' money Interest Rates – Don't Fight The Fed, raising rates to lower value of assets Market Risk – can get Treasury Bills at 4 – 5%, risk-free, need good ROI to invest in stocks with 10 – 20% downside risk Wealthy own Assets, Business, Real Estate, Stocks are the best and most popular The Intelligent Investor Ben Graham's teaching, and seminal investing book - Ch. 8 on Mr. Market, & Ch. 20 on Margin of Safety       Notes: Seg. 1 MB on Mean Reversion & Market Cycles Mean Reversion – Mean Reversion, or reversion (or regression) to the mean, is a theory used in finance that suggests that asset price volatility, and historical returns eventually will revert to the long-run mean or average level of the entire dataset.   Prices do not go up forever, they tend to level out over the long term. This is why so many investors monitor the 52 week High / Low average of a stock, and how it is trailing. Many stocks will go up 5, or 10 – 20% in  a year, and then go back down – whether because they are cyclical, a ‘hot buy', scandal with the Co., or market circumstances, etc.   Market Cycles, also known as stock market cycles, is a wide term referring to trends or patterns that emerge during different markets or business environments. During a cycle, some securities or asset classes outperform others because their business models aligned with conditions for growth. Market cycles are the period between the two latest highs or lows of a common benchmark, such as the S&P 500, highlighting a fund's performance through both an up and a down market.   Market Cycles, are common as economic phases rise, then fall. Think of this like a like a Pendulum, and pay attention to how they are moving currently. A great example is a Recession, where the market is down for 6 to 10 months, and stocks are all falling. As the economy comes out of the Recession, there are many opportunities for buys of the stocks of good companies that were down from the Recession, but now are rebounding.   Mean Reversion – companies or stocks go down over time, because completion comes after the main players in a an industry and chip away     Seg. 2 Replay Clip with Drew Niv on Risk   Guest: Drew Niv, Trader Tools & former Forex Trader LKIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drew-niv-123812160/ Drew Niv had a 20 year career in trading and FX (currency) markets. He founded one of the largest Forex trading companies on Wall Street, took it public (IPO), managed hundreds of staff, and oversaw $ billions in daily trading. Currently he runs a bank software company called Trader Tools, that specializes in FX markets. - https://www.tradertools.com/ Drew Niv is a Strategic, Technology Savvy, and Detail-Oriented Board Member and Global Business Executive with a history of award-winning performance as a visionary leader. Founded company that disrupted the FX industry, resulted in retail FX becoming a major factor of the global FX market. Developed breakthrough technology that enabled customers to transact spot FX at 70–90% less cost than the largest exchanges and ECNs. He has forged strategic partnerships with 1,000 institutional customers, including major hedge funds, all large banks, and other brand name financial institutions, both domestically and globally.     Market is very sensitive to interest rates. The Fed establishes interest rates. Interest Rates set the tone for the entire financial industry, from business lending, to stocks, bonds, banking, insurance, investments, mortgages, etc. Market Fundamentals are always valid, and post 0% rates, and current high inflation, become even more valid. Pension plans and insurance company's returns will be affected by interest rates. They are looking at minimum rates of 4 to 5%. Interest rates have been low, near 0% for a number of years. It is tough to get Treasury bills when only at 1%. Companies were forced to chase return and take on more risk by acquiring corporate bonds and stocks. Investor mentality was not challenged at times for the last few years. Hard to know what a good investment is at 0% interest rates. Money was cheap, so people were investing in numerous things, borrowing $, and taking chances. We saw the rise of the Pandemic stocks in 2020 with companies like Carvana, Peloton, and different crypto assets. These all turned out to be bubbles, and wound up flopping in 2022. The crypto market has seen 90% shrinkage. Some companies go bankrupt, while others are acquired at $.10 on the dollar. Investment philosophy 101 - you compare all investments that have risk to a risk-free investment. Treasury Bills are considered risk-free investments where with very little risk, you can get 3 to 5%. If you are going to buy a stock by comparison, and take on more risk, you have to be paid for taking on that risk. A stock could have 10 to 20% downside risk, vs a T Bill which has almost no downside risk, the government is a good bet. The two-year treasury bill is at 4% annually. Professional investors always look at the risk/reward ratio. Whenever you look at an investment, you have to consider the duration, the type of asset, and what you want to benchmark it against. Example: you invest in Apple, are they a credit risk? What is the ROI? The return on an investment should be better than treasury bills, accounting for the potential downside risk of 10% (or more). Inflation causes the economy to weaken. Housing prices decline like other assets. In 2023, inflation should go down. This assumes the Government doesn't spend too much money, in which case inflation stays the same. The Fed is raising rates to bring asset values down. In the current environment, 2023, savers will be rewarded. This is similar to from the 1980s to the 1990s where you could actually earn interest on saving money. With low interest rates from 2005 to 2020, savers were punished. 2023 will be the return of the saver. Cash will be king. Valuations are collapsing, see tech stocks, crypto, and maybe housing? Psychology of the Investor – The investor currently still remembers the highs of the last few years. As they sell off and get out of the market (expecting a recession), their viewpoint slowly changes. Typically recessions last 2 years, and this is considered short. But it takes years for investors to regain confidence and jump back into the market. Historically market timing is tricky. In the current environment you want to reduce exposure to assets. Go to the Federal Reserve website to look at the history of housing prices. The last decade has seen an unprecedented climb in the price of housing assets - https://www.stlouisfed.org/  Mean Reversion is setting in, this happens with assets. What goes up, must come down. A retracement in valuations of assets. When you look at housing and regional markets some values are even higher, ie: the Sun Belt like Florida or the southwest. Things that are illiquid assets, lower to the reset value, it's different than last time. Illiquid is the state of a security or other asset that cannot quickly and easily be sold or exchanged for cash without a substantial loss in value. Non-bank lenders will be hurt. Examples of this might be an insurance company, mortgage co., venture capital or private equity.   Full Show: HERE     Seg. 3 Replay Clip of Denver Nowicz talking  Assets and why Own a Business   Co-Host: Denver Nowicz, President - Wealth For Life https://wealthforlife.net/brt/ https://twitter.com/denvernowicz  Denver is an advisor with nearly 20 years experience working with clients in investments and insurance, designing retirement plans with a combo of both. He takes us through different strategies for clients to get the best allocations for their money over the long term. It is the Combo Strategy of both Offense and Defense, the synergy of the mix, not ‘All or Nothing'.       Businesses are usually the largest asset class of the wealthy. Options are starting your own business, buying a turnkey type business, like a franchise, or buying an established business thru acquisition. Businesses might be physical like a traditional brick and mortar store or a digital businesses which are online businesses. When you're earning a high W-2 income you are punished by the tax code. If you want to make more money and grow your business you improve the systems and then invest in different types of assets. Digital businesses are very good because they have low overhead, low expenses. Examples would be an educational course, consulting or a mastermind group. Once you start earning over $500K to $1 mil+ , you need to be thinking very carefully about tax strategies. You want to figure out ways to redirect capital from the IRS to better assets that assist you. Examples could be charities, or real estate. Active tax strategies, find good accountants and asset protection attorneys who can create a proactive strategy. If you own a business that can make an extra $50,000 a year in income, that is the equivalent of owning a $1 million stock portfolio giving off 5% a year in dividends or owning a $1 million property giving 5% in rental income. To have a good tax protection do you want to get away from W-2 income, create businesses with write offs with LLCs and expenses, and also mix in real estate.   Full Show: HERE   More - Assets Show: HERE   Wealth for Life Topic: HERE     Seg. 4 MB on Ben Graham's teaching and seminal investing book, The Intelligent Investor (c 1949), & review of the 2 main chapters - Ch. 8 on Mr. Market, and Ch. 20 on Margin of Safety   Ben Graham was an economist, professor, and investor. He is also known as the Father of Value Investing, and the author of Security Analysis, and The Intelligent Investor. He stressed fundamental analysis of securities (stocks), investor mindset, focused investing, and ‘buy and hold'. He was Warren Buffet's professor, one time boss, friend and mentor. More: Here Buffet – Rule #1 Never Lose Money, Rule #2 Remember Rule #1 Ch. 8 - The Investor and Market Fluctuations / aka – Mr. Market Parable Ch. 20 - Margin of Safety as the Central Concept of Investment Stocks are a piece of ownership of a company, not just some piece of paper. You have to be able to value the company to determine if the market is selling you the stock at a discount, or if it is over-valued. A good investment is based on the price you pay for it. A good stock can be over-priced, and a bad stock can be a good buy if the price is depressed enough. You make money when you buy (what you pay).   Mr. Market is very emotional, and changes his mind daily. Sometimes he makes you an offer on a stock that is silly, and other times he offers a stock at a deep value, at a low price. This is when you should buy. It is all about psychology, discipline and patience.   Margin of Safety is the idea to buy stocks with a defensive mindset. Buy it cheaper than the value, so if your valuation was off, you give yourself room for error. You have to do detailed fundamental analysis to determine if a stock is over or under valued. Then you hold until the stock, ride out the fluctuations until it rises to its true value.   Full Show: HERE     Investing Topic: https://brt-show.libsyn.com/category/Investing-Stocks-Bonds-Retirement   More 'Best of Investing': Here   ‘Best Of' Topic: https://brt-show.libsyn.com/category/Best+of+BRT         Thanks for Listening. Please Subscribe to the BRT Podcast.     Business Roundtable with Matt Battaglia The show where Entrepreneurs, High Level Executives, Business Owners, and Investors come to share insight and ideas about the future of business. BRT 2.0 looks at the new trends in business, and how classic industries are evolving.  Common Topics Discussed: Business, Entrepreneurship, Investing, Stocks, Cannabis, Tech, Blockchain / Crypto, Real Estate, Legal, Sales, Charity, and more…  BRT Podcast Home Page: https://brt-show.libsyn.com/ ‘Best Of' BRT Podcast: Click Here BRT Podcast on Google: Click Here BRT Podcast on Spotify: Click Here                    More Info: https://www.economicknight.com/podcast-brt-home/ KFNX Info: https://1100kfnx.com/weekend-featured-shows/   Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the Hosts, Guests and Speakers, and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent (or affiliates, members, managers, employees or partners), or any Station, Podcast Platform, Website or Social Media that this show may air on. All information provided is for educational and entertainment purposes. Nothing said on this program should be considered advice or recommendations in: business, legal, real estate, crypto, tax accounting, investment, etc. Always seek the advice of a professional in all business ventures, including but not limited to: investments, tax, loans, legal, accounting, real estate, crypto, contracts, sales, marketing, other business arrangements, etc.  

On today's show we are taking a look at interest rates. Yesterday the Federal Reserve increased the Federal Funds rate to a range between 5.25%-5.5%.  This clearly sets the stage for short term interest rates to increase. The yield on the 10 year treasury decreased from 3.91% to 3.86% following the Fed announcement.  The yield on the 30 day Tbill is currently 5.46%. This is matching the Fed funds rate.  Back in October of 2022 the 30 day T-Bill yield was ranging between 2.85% and 3.75% as the Fed was aggressively increasing rates during that period. The yield on the 10 year Treasury at that time was 4.25%. The interest rate that most investor care about is linked to the yield on the 10 year Treasury.  Today we have an interest rate inversion where the market is clearly signalling to the Fed that they don't believe them.  The real question is what's next?  We are seeing deflationary prices. We have a globally synchronized  economic cycle.  The Fed says it is raising rates, and the European Central Bank says it is raising rates. But as we have discussed on this show before, we have not seen a dramatic rise in bond rates over the past 8-9 months. Since most long term lending is indexed to the yield on the 10-year or the 30 year bond, these numbers have hardly moved since October.  If you listen to the rhetoric from the Fed Chairman, you would think they have tremendous influence over the market.  The market sets the rates, not the Fed Open Market Committee.  In Europe, we are seeing demand for credit falling. This is not being driven by rate increases. The reason we know that is that rates have hardly increased. So that cannot be the reason. Businesses are not going to stop borrowing money for a couple of percentage points if they have things to do that will drive business growth. We went from 0% to 2% in Europe. That's not enough to choke off business activity. There must be another explanation.  These are deflation and recessionary markers that are consistent with an economic cycle.  Rates rise when there is a competition for money. Rates fall when there is a lack of demand for money. When we talk about money markets, this is an accurate term in the true sense of the word “market”. Just like the price of tomatoes or gold or oil, if demand goes up and exceeds supply, the price goes up. If demand falls, then prices fall. It's the same thing with money. If demand for money goes up, then interest rates rise. Regardless what the Fed says about rates, we see supply and demand forces are dominating the cost of money over the longer term. 

As we wrap up the week, we take a look at the June jobs report and how it may affect the calls for recession and the Fed's actions moving forward. We'll also dissect movement in the electric vehicle, T-Bill, and housing markets and end with our takes on the great American summer blockbusters. Key Takeaways [00:27] - Looking at the newest jobs report [7:15] - T-Bill yields are at their highest in over two decades [10:34] - The implications of interest rates [11:06] - Teslas and the electric car market overall [16:22] - Could we see sub-3% mortgage rates again? [20:30] - We put on our film critic hats to say what American movies need to do Links Ryan Detrick: Takeaways from the new jobs numbers Mark Zandi: “The June employment report was close to perfect” Current Truflation number T-Bills are at their highest rate in over 20 years CNBC: Least affordable car market in modern history The top-selling EVs in the first half of 2023 in the US WSJ: Rising EV inventory on dealership lots will offer test of future demand Antonelli: the sub 3% 30 year fixed rate mortgage will be the greatest gift ever bestowed on US homeowners. Connect with our hosts Doug Stokes Greg Stokes Stokes Family Office Subscribe and stay in touch Apple Podcasts Spotify Google Podcasts lagniappe.stokesfamilyoffice.com Disclosure The information in this podcast is educational and general in nature and does not take into consideration the listener's personal circumstances. Therefore, it is not intended to be a substitute for specific, individualized financial, legal, or tax advice. To determine which strategies or investments may be suitable for you, consult the appropriate, qualified professional prior to making a final decision.

In Episode 316 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Andy Constan about this week's FOMC meeting and what the Federal Reserve rate decision could signal about the direction of interest rates, inflation, and economic growth. Will it be heralded as the long anticipate Fed pivot or seen as yet another head fake on our way toward “higher for longer,” serving as a drag on equity valuations and a headwind to economic growth? Because Andy's analysis is largely quantitative and flows based, he looks at not only what policymakers and investors are saying, but also what they're doing, what they're buying, and how they're buying it. This holds important information for the direction of bond prices, equities (and other risk asset), inflation, and economic growth, all of which Constan and Kofinas discuss in the second part of their conversation. The two also run through different scenarios surrounding the Federal Reserve rate decision, the significance of Janet Yellen's decision to refill the Treasury General Account (TGA) using largely T-Bill issuance as opposed to longer duration bonds, and why the long-anticipated recession has failed to materialize despite the most aggressive interest rate increases in 40 years. You can subscribe to our premium content and gain access to our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports (or Key Takeaways) at HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces genius community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, access to special research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners, you can also do that on our subscriber page. If you still have questions, feel free to email info@hiddenforces.io, and Demetri or someone else from our team will get right back to you. If you enjoyed listening to today's episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | YouTube | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify Subscribe to our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/ Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://hiddenforces.io Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 06/13/2023

Will UK inflation finally head below 10%? Also today we look at US M2 money supply and the expected T-Bill tsunami.

Markets appear to be climbing a wall of worry. Hoping that everything works out. Big badminton news - not to be missed. An update on markets and the weekly stock picks. PLUS we are now on Spotify and Amazon Music/Podcasts! Click HERE for Show Notes and Links DHUnplugged is now streaming live - with listener chat. Click on link on the right sidebar. Love the Show? Then how about a Donation? Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter Follow Andrew Horowitz on Twitter Warm Up - NEW CTP for PacWest Bank (PACW) - Wild one.. - US default - create problem fix problem (all politicians know) - Wall of Worry - climbing - Badminton news - this is big - Europe Bound - No Show Next Week - 1 month T-Bill 5.6% Market Update - Stocks impervious - resilient (Not much movement within range) - Close Call- Banks skidded by another potential weekend bailout - that's good.... - Big Tech leads by a wide margin - YTD - DJIA up 18% - Hedge Funds crowding a trade again - AI rage making the rounds again  DONATIONS ! That was better - but we are going to hit the debt ceiling at DHUnplugged - need your help. Debt Ceiling - Now they are talking about July, if June is cleared - Will slow walk this right up until the last minute - Game of chicken, but just politics as usual - Default would be big BIG problem - global system would unravel Wonky action - US Treasuries - S/T debt moving around a bit - Last week, the yield on 1-month Treasury bills surged 23.8 basis points to hit a high of 5.689% and yields on 2-month bills climbed to a high of 5.283% as investors sold off notes that mature about the time the debt limit could be hit. Musk in the News - Elon Musk hires ex-NBCUniversal ad chief Linda Yaccarino to be Twitter's CEO - Already too many ads - obnoxious - At first, TESLA stock got a bid as the thought was that Elon would get back to work at Tesla - "I am excited to welcome Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of Twitter!" Musk tweeted. He said she "will focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design & new technology." - He added, "Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app." More Musk........ There is always more Musk.... Tucker and Twitter - Tucker Carlson is starting a new show n Twitter - How does that work? One More Musk - Chief Executive Elon Musk has said that the company can make no new hires unless he personally approves them, including contractors - According to the report, Musk told executives to send him a list of hiring requests on a weekly basis, while also cautioning them to "think carefully" before submitting such requests. Crowded Trade - Hedge Funds releasing their quarterly additions and deletions - Crowding into mega-cap names - no wonder that the NASDAQ is so green this year - - Crowded trades make for tough exits M&A News - Gold giant Newmont Corp. secured a A$28.8 billion ($19.2 billion) deal to buy Australian rival Newcrest Mining Ltd., consolidating its position as the world's biggest bullion producer with mines across the Americas, Africa, Australia and Papua New Guinea. - The transaction, now unanimously approved by Newcrest's board but pending regulatory approval, is the gold mining sector's largest deal to date, surpassing Newmont's purchase of rival Goldcorp Inc. - In 2019. Newcrest, whose then chief executive officer stepped down abruptly at the end of last year, rejected initial overtures, though it had indicated earlier this month that it planned to recommend an improved takeover offer from its suitor. - Gold at high end of range is odd timing to get a deal (valuation based "cheapness") MCD Burns again - 4-year old - Remember the McDonald's Coffee lawsuits? - McDonald's and a franchise holder are at fault after a hot Chicken McNugget from a Happy Meal fell on a little girl's leg and caused second-degree burns

This week on “Inside the Economy”, we look at income, housing and other economic data. ISM manufacturing data ticked up a bit, while GDP estimates for Q1 came in lower. The Federal Reserve is expected to raise rates 0.25% this month as inflation numbers continue to stay above 5%. What will it take to fight inflation and avoid a recession? Tune in to learn about this and more! Key Takeaways: • 3-month T-Bill above 5% • Oil drops to below $75 per barrel • Mortgage rates still above 6.25%

This week on “Inside the Economy”, we look at income, housing and other economic data. ISM manufacturing data ticked up a bit, while GDP estimates for Q1 came in lower. The Federal Reserve is expected to raise rates 0.25% this month as inflation numbers continue to stay above 5%. What will it take to fight inflation and avoid a recession? Tune in to learn about this and more! Key Takeaways: 3-month T-Bill above 5% Oil drops to below $75 per barrel Mortgage rates still above 6.25%

Ben, Mo, and Tom discuss the 3-month T-Bill hitting a 22-year high. More earnings are discussed with the auto industry functioning fine - aside from a poor reading on Tesla. The housing market seems to have somewhat stabilized, with smaller, cheaper new housing being built. For information on how to join the Zoom calls live each morning at 8:30 EST, visit https://www.narwhalcapital.com/blog/daily-market-briefingsPlease see disclosures:https://www.narwhalcapital.com/disclosure

On today's show we are answering a simple but important question: Is the market ignoring the Fed?  What does the yield curve tell us about the recent 0.25% rate increase  announced by the Federal Reserve on Wednesday.  The shape of the yield curve can tell us a lot about the market sentiment in response to the Federal Funds rate. We have been inverted for much of the past year.  The yield curve has flattened a lot in the past two weeks as a result of the banking crisis. We have seen demand for short term T-Bills spike which has pushed prices up and yields down. Over the course of the day we have continued to see yields fall despite the rate increase announcement.  The banks have a choice to put cash on deposit at the fed for a rate of 4.75%. Reverse repo is incredibly flexible and secure.  But for some reason, they're choosing not to put those funds on deposit at the Fed, which offers the highest interest rate in the market and is risk free). We see all of the Treasury offerings, except the 6 month T-Bill pricing below the federal funds rate.  The two year is down 36 basis points over the day at 3.882%. The 4 week T-bill is at 3.91%, down 28 basis points over the day. The 8 week is at 3.98, roughly flat for the day. The 10 year is yielding 3.462, roughly flat for the day The 30 year is yielding 3.68, down six basis points from the day before.  All of these rates except for the 6 month are below the Fed funds rate. I don't believe there is anything magical about the 6 month T Blll other than market inefficiency at play. We will continue to monitor the 6 month to see if the trend we are seeing in the other maturities.  So what does this all mean? Should we be happy and calm or terrified? 

Do you have an old 401k or 403b languishing in some bad investments? Maybe it's time to get those rolled over into something better. We hear from lots of listeners: How can the cost basis of multiple funds we determined? Can I-Bond interest be declared annually, even though it's deferred? Where should money from an inherited 401k be parked temporarily? Which is better: Fidelity or Vanguard? Does it make sense to create a T-Bill ladder? Are there long-term bonds that pay a higher rate? Does it make sense to sell taxable assets to fund a Roth? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Assets, Interest Rates & Bubbles - Market Recap for 2022 w/ Drew Niv BRT S04 EP02 (164) 1-8-2023 What We Learned This Week Assets – Valuations have gone down, forces Investors to evaluate the worth of an Asset, Risk / Reward analysis, no more ‘free' money Interest Rates – Don't Fight The Fed, raising rates to lower value of assets Market Risk – can get Treasury Bills at 4 – 5%, risk-free, need good ROI to invest in stocks with 10 – 20% downside risk Oil Commodities – demand is up, supply is down, Gov't will keep the price of oil at $70 / barrel Bubbles / Crypto – does not have good utility, market has collapsed, Bitcoin & Ethereum will survive, has use, plus the Black Market       Guest: Drew Niv, Trader Tools & former Forex Trader LKIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drew-niv-123812160/ Drew Niv had a 20 year career in trading and FX (currency) markets. He founded one of the largest Forex trading companies on Wall Street, took it public (IPO), managed hundreds of staff, and oversaw $ billions in daily trading. Currently he runs a bank software company called Trader Tools, that specializes in FX markets. - https://www.tradertools.com/ Drew Niv is a Strategic, Technology Savvy, and Detail-Oriented Board Member and Global Business Executive with a history of award-winning performance as a visionary leader. Founded company that disrupted the FX industry, resulted in retail FX becoming a major factor of the global FX market. Developed breakthrough technology that enabled customers to transact spot FX at 70–90% less cost than the largest exchanges and ECNs. He has forged strategic partnerships with 1,000 institutional customers, including major hedge funds, all large banks, and other brand name financial institutions, both domestically and globally. Drew possess a unique understanding of market microstructure - the inner plumbing of trade matching, how technology intersects with business, and how to grow a business from a small startup through an IPO. Well versed in managing through a crisis and positioning a mature business to meet the unique challenges of a shrinking industry. Experienced in software product development; able to design and build trading software that people want to use; and experienced in managing a diverse, international workforce remotely.     Notes: Drew Niv - 20 year Wall Street career & former forex trader Currently sells financial software to banks – he used to fight the Wall Street wars, now he arms them, less stress, and an easier business Review of the Markets 2022   Seg 1 Market is very sensitive to interest rates. The Fed establishes interest rates. Interest Rates set the tone for the entire financial industry, from business lending, to stocks, bonds, banking, insurance, investments, mortgages, etc. Market Fundamentals are always valid, and post 0% rates, and current high inflation, become even more valid. Pension plans and insurance company's returns will be affected by interest rates. They are looking at minimum rates of 4 to 5%. Interest rates have been low, near 0% for a number of years. It is tough to get Treasury bills when only at 1%. Companies were forced to chase return and take on more risk by acquiring corporate bonds and stocks. Investor mentality was not challenged at times for the last few years. Hard to know what a good investment is at 0% interest rates. Money was cheap, so people were investing in numerous things, borrowing $, and taking chances. We saw the rise of the Pandemic stocks in 2020 with companies like Carvana, Peloton, and different crypto assets. These all turned out to be bubbles, and wound up flopping in 2022. The crypto market has seen 90% shrinkage. Some companies go bankrupt, while others are acquired at $.10 on the dollar. Investment philosophy 101 - you compare all investments that have risk to a risk-free investment. Treasury Bills are considered risk-free investments where with very little risk, you can get 3 to 5%. If you are going to buy a stock by comparison, and take on more risk, you have to be paid for taking on that risk. A stock could have 10 to 20% downside risk, vs a T Bill which has almost no downside risk, the government is a good bet. The two-year treasury bill is at 4% annually. Professional investors always look at the risk/reward ratio. Whenever you look at an investment, you have to consider the duration, the type of asset, and what you want to benchmark it against. Example: you invest in Apple, are they a credit risk? What is the ROI? The return on an investment should be better than treasury bills, accounting for the potential downside risk of 10% (or more).   Seg 2 Inflation causes the economy to weaken. Housing prices decline like other assets. In 2023, inflation should go down. This assumes the Government doesn't spend too much money, in which case inflation stays the same. The Fed is raising rates to bring asset values down. In the current environment, 2023, savers will be rewarded. This is similar to from the 1980s to the 1990s where you could actually earn interest on saving money. With low interest rates from 2005 to 2020, savers were punished. 2023 will be the return of the saver. Cash will be king. Valuations are collapsing, see tech stocks, crypto, and maybe housing? Psychology of the Investor – The investor currently still remembers the highs of the last few years. As they sell off and get out of the market (expecting a recession), their viewpoint slowly changes. Typically recessions last 2 years, and this is considered short. But it takes years for investors to regain confidence and jump back into the market. Historically market timing is tricky. In the current environment you want to reduce exposure to assets. Go to the Federal Reserve website to look at the history of housing prices. The last decade has seen an unprecedented climb in the price of housing assets - https://www.stlouisfed.org/  Mean Reversion is setting in, this happens with assets. What goes up, must come down. A retracement in valuations of assets. When you look at housing and regional markets some values are even higher, ie: the Sun Belt like Florida or the southwest. Things that are illiquid assets, lower to the reset value, it's different than last time. Illiquid is the state of a security or other asset that cannot quickly and easily be sold or exchanged for cash without a substantial loss in value. Non-bank lenders will be hurt. Examples of this might be an insurance company, mortgage co., venture capital or private equity.   Seg 3 Oil demand is up, despite the government trying to stop it. Supply is decreasing, and oil prices are going up with inflation. Commodities in general are on the uptick as an asset class. With regard to energy, there are risks of rising prices. China is on the rebound and it is the second largest consumer of oil in the world. Currently with US Gov't strategy, there is no cohesive policy to drill for oil. Cannot replace the oil reserves that have been used. The market has changed, demand is up. The government will try to keep the price of oil at $70, and refill the strategic reserve. Energy companies understand all of this, and are operating a lot more efficient than in the past. They have lowered production costs, and can actually make money at $20-$30 a barrel. Bottom line they are leaner and meaner. Natural gas is very important, and the preeminent energy in Europe.   Seg 4 Crypto does not have good utility. There is no real regulation and the price has been based on speculation the last few years. Investors buy crypto and then look for the value to go up, to sell to the next person. The classic ‘greater fool' theory. Many of these exchanges have turned out to either be run poorly, having bad books, and bad management - not experienced enough, or outright frauds like FTX. Crypto, specially Bitcoin, will still exist in the future. It is already being used in the black market and may even grow with use there. There are still too many countries with bad currency and bad banking, plus worse government. Citizens will use crypto in the black market to get around this. Usage will be to move money, do banking, get goods, and even smuggle money. This is why when you have seen multiple crypto coins collapse, both Bitcoin and Ether have not gone to $0 because of the black market. There is some usage as a payment method. Also in regards to Blockchain technology / Ethereum, there may be technological utility in the future. Forex (FX or currency trading) is not typically understood by most investors. It is very transparent and has low fees. Student loan crisis is very real. College costs are rising way too much. There is no disclosure for the ROI on the cost of tuition and the degree that major colleges give out. Not uncommon for a college to cost $200,000+ for a 4 year degree. Then the student graduates and can only get a $30,000 a year job. It's a negative ROI on many college majors. The top 10 professions for degrees and pay revolve around a few major themes. Math, engineering, and programming degrees are important and provide for good jobs now This will only get more important in the future. Compare this vs other degree like English lit or languages that are a poor investment and do not get good jobs. K - 12 prep schools are not preparing kids properly for college and careers.   O/T Seg 5 Regarding school and recommended careers. Technology, science, and math are the themes of sectors to pay attention too. Further breaking it down, bio engineering, any type of engineering programming or construction, programmers and anything with tech or computers. Future is AI, software, and coding. VCs / venture capitalist looking for the next curve to fund and find the winners. What is the next tech revolution? Every major company now is a tech company. All the big fortune 500 corporations and beyond are using AI and algorithms - a.k.a. data science as part of their daily function and running many operations in the business. Not just tech companies anymore, there is a requirement in most companies to have a tech division. Understanding how to use big data, programming, AI and algorithms. JP Morgan Chase has a tech team which is small, that runs all of the AI trading. They have more volume, more transactions, creating fees and more ROI for the bank. Example: ATM that replaces tellers, and works 24/7 There is an arms race in finance which has really become a tech race. Same goes for other industries – Sales, Oil, marketing / advertising and customer service. Tech is permeating the future of many industries. So programmers, coders, and data engineers are all going to be in demand. They will be able to get a king's ransom for pay. The average programmer can make a lot of money as demand continues to be high. Working in boring fields like math, is very lucrative. Reminder, if you haven't learned anything from the show, don't fight The Fed. Don't get cute with your investing. Invest for good returns and understand what type of return to expect versus risk-free assets. 2023: we will see reality set back in.     ‘Best Of' Topic: https://brt-show.libsyn.com/category/Best+of+BRT   Investing Topic: https://brt-show.libsyn.com/category/Investing-Stocks-Bonds-Retirement More 'Best of Investing': Here   Real Estate Topic: https://brt-show.libsyn.com/category/Real+Estate-Construction-Land-Farming     Thanks for Listening. Please Subscribe to the BRT Podcast.     Business Roundtable with Matt Battaglia The show where Entrepreneurs, High Level Executives, Business Owners, and Investors come to share insight and ideas about the future of business. BRT 2.0 looks at the new trends in business, and how classic industries are evolving.  Common Topics Discussed: Business, Entrepreneurship, Investing, Stocks, Cannabis, Tech, Blockchain / Crypto, Real Estate, Legal, Sales, Charity, and more…  BRT Podcast Home Page: https://brt-show.libsyn.com/ ‘Best Of' BRT Podcast: Click Here BRT Podcast on Google: Click Here BRT Podcast on Spotify: Click Here                    More Info: https://www.economicknight.com/podcast-brt-home/ KFNX Info: https://1100kfnx.com/weekend-featured-shows/   Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the Hosts, Guests and Speakers, and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent (or affiliates, members, managers, employees or partners), or any Station, Podcast Platform, Website or Social Media that this show may air on. All information provided is for educational and entertainment purposes. Nothing said on this program should be considered advice or recommendations in: business, legal, real estate, crypto, tax accounting, investment, etc. Always seek the advice of a professional in all business ventures, including but not limited to: investments, tax, loans, legal, accounting, real estate, crypto, contracts, sales, marketing, other business arrangements, etc.    

One of my best episodes ever. Lars Doucet is the author of Land is a Big Deal, a book about Georgism which has been praised by Vitalik Buterin, Scott Alexander, and Noah Smith. Sam Altman is the lead investor in his new startup, ValueBase.Talking with Lars completely changed how I think about who creates value in the world and who leeches off it.We go deep into the weeds on Georgism:* Why do even the wealthiest places in the world have poverty and homelessness, and why do rents increase as fast as wages?* Why are land-owners able to extract the profits that rightly belong to labor and capital?* How would taxing the value of land alleviate speculation, NIMBYism, and income and sales taxes?Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here.Follow Lars on Twitter. Follow me on Twitter.Timestamps(00:00:00) - Intro(00:01:11) - Georgism(00:03:16) - Metaverse Housing Crises(00:07:10) - Tax Leisure?(00:13:53) - Speculation & Frontiers(00:24:33) - Social Value of Search (00:33:13) - Will Georgism Destroy The Economy?(00:38:51) - The Economics of San Francisco(00:43:31) - Transfer from Landowners to Google?(00:46:47) - Asian Tigers and Land Reform(00:51:19) - Libertarian Georgism(00:55:42) - Crypto(00:57:16) - Transitioning to Georgism(01:02:56) - Lars's Startup & Land Assessment (01:15:12) - Big Tech(01:20:50) - Space(01:23:05) - Copyright(01:25:02) - Politics of Georgism(01:33:10) - Someone Is Always Collecting RentsTranscriptThis transcript was partially autogenerated and thus may contain errors.Lars Doucet - 00:00:00: Over the last century, we've had this huge conflict. All the oxygen's been sucked up by capitalism and socialism duking it out. We have this assumption that you either have to be pro worker or pro business that you can't be both. I have noticed a lot of crypto people get into Georgism, so not the least of which is Vitalik Buterin and you endorse my book. If you earn $100,000 in San Francisco as a family of four, you are below the poverty line. Let's start with just taxing the things nobody has made and that people are gatekeeping access to. Let's tax essentially monopolies and rent seeking. The income tax needs to do this full anal probe on everyone in the country and then audits the poor at a higher rate than the rich. And it's just this horrible burden we have. Dwarkesh Patel - 00:00:39: Okay, today I have the pleasure of speaking with Lars Doucet, who developed the highly acclaimed Defender's Quest game and part two is coming out next year, but now he's working on a new startup. But the reason we're talking is that he wrote a review of Henry George's progress and poverty that won Scott Alexander's Book Review Contest and now it has been turned into an expanded into this book Land is a Big Deal. So Lars, welcome to the podcast. New Speaker: Great to be here, Dwarkesh . Okay, so let's just get into it. What is Georgism? Lars Doucet - 00:01:12: Okay, so the book is based off of the philosophy of a 19th century American economist by the name of Henry George from once we get George's and basically George's thesis is kind of the title of my book that land is a big deal. Georgism is often reduced to its main policy prescription that we should have a land value tax, which is a tax on the unimproved value of land, but not a tax on any buildings or infrastructure on top of the land, anything humans add. But the basic insight of it is that it's kind of reflected in the aphorisms you hear from real estate agents when they say things like the three laws of real estate or location location location and buy land, it's the one thing they're not making any more of. It's basically this insight that land has this hidden role in the economy that is really underrated. But if you look at history through the right lens, control over land is the oldest struggle of human history. It goes beyond human history. Animals have been fighting over land forever. That's what they're fighting over in Ukraine and Russia right now, right? And basically the fundamental insight of Georgism is that over the last century, we've had this huge conflict. All the oxygen's been sucked up by capitalism and socialism duking it out. We have this assumption that you either have to be pro worker or pro business that you can't be both. And Georgism is genuinely pro pro worker and pro business. But what it's against is is land speculation. And if we can find a way to share the earth, then we can solve the paradox that is the title of George's book, progress and poverty, why does poverty advance even when progress advances? Why do we have all this industrialized technology and new methods and it in George's time it was industrial technology in our time its computers and everything else? We have all this good stuff. We can make more than we've ever made before. There's enough wealth for everybody. And yet we still have inequality. Where does it come from? And George answers that question in his book. And I expand on it in mine. Dwarkesh Patel - 00:03:15: Yep. OK, so yeah, I'm excited to get into the theory of all of it in a second. But first I'm curious how much of your interest in the subject has been inspired with the fact that as a game developer, you're constantly dealing with decentralized rent seekers, like Steve or iOS app store. Is that part of the inspiration behind your interest in Georgism or is that separate? Lars Doucet - 00:03:38: It's interesting. I wouldn't say that's what clued me into it in the first place. But I have become very interested in all forms of rent seeking. In this general category of things we call land-like assets that come to first mover advantages in these large platform economies. I've started to think a lot about it basically. But the essence of land speculation is you have this entire class of people who are able to basically gatekeep access to a scarce resource that everybody needs, which is land, that you can't opt out of needing. And because of that, everyone basically has to pay them rent. And those people don't necessarily do anything. They just got there first and tell everyone else, it's like, well, if you want to participate in the world, you need to pay me. And so we're actually the actual connection with game development, actually clued me into Georgism. And I'd heard about Georgism before. I'd read about it. I thought it was interesting. But then I started noticing this weird phenomenon in online multiplayer games going back 30 years repeatedly of virtual housing crises, which is the most bizarre concept in the world to me, like basically a housingcrisis in the Metaverse and predecessors to the Metaverse. And as early as the Alt Online (?)online when I was 19, this is this online game that you could play. And you could build houses in the game and put them down somewhere. And so what I found was that houses were actually fairly cheap. You could work long enough in a game to be afford to buy blueprints for a house, which will be put it somewhere. But there was no land to put it on. And at the time, I thought, oh, well, I guess the server failed up. I didn't really think much about it. I was like, this stinks. I didn't join the game early enough. I'm screwed out of housing. And then I kind of forgot about it. And then 20 years later, I checked back in. And that housing crisis is still ongoing in that game. That game is still running a good 25 years later. And that housing crisis remains unsolved. And you have this entire black market for housing. And then I noticed that that trend was repeated in other online games, like Final Fantasy 14. And then recently in 2022, with all this huge wave of crypto games, like Axi Infinity, and that's Decentral Land and the Sandbox. And then Yuga Labs' Board-Ape Yacht Club, the other side, had all these big land sales. And at the time, I was working as an analyst for a video game consulting firm called Novik. And I told my employers, it's like, we are going to see all the same problems happen. We are going to see virtual land speculation. They're going to hit virtual. They're going to reproduce the conditions of housing crisis in the real world. And it's going to be a disaster. And I called it, and it turns out I was right. And we've now seen that whole cycle kind of work itself out. And it just kind of blew my mind that we could reproduce the problems of the real world so articulately in the virtual world without anyone trying to do it. It just happened. And that is kind of the actual connection between my background in game design and kind of getting George Pilled as the internet kids call it these days. Dwarkesh Patel - 00:06:43: There was a hilarious clip. Some comedian was on Joe Rogan's podcast. I think it was like Tim Dillon. And they're talking about, I think, Decentraland, where if you want to be Snoop Dogg's neighbor in the Metaverse, it costs like a couple million dollars or something. And Joe Rogan was like, so you think you can afford to live there. And then Tim Dillon's like, no, but I'm going to start another Metaverse and I'm going to work hard. But OK, so let's go into Georgism himself. So Tyler Cohen had a blog post a long time ago who was comparing taxing land to taxing unimproved labor or unimproved capital. And it's an interesting concept, right? Should I, so I have a CS degree, right? Should I be taxed at the same level as an entry level software engineer instead of a podcast or because I'm not using my time as efficiently as possible. And so leisure in another way is the labor equivalent of having an unimproved parking lot in the middle of San Francisco or capital. If I'm just keeping my capital out of the economy and therefore making it not useful, maybe I should have that capital taxed at the rate of the capital gains on T-Bill. And this way, you're not punishing people for having profitable investments, which you're kind of doing with a capital gains, right? What would you think of that comparison? Lars Doucet - 00:08:07: Yeah, so really, before you can even answer that question, you've got to go back to ground moral principles you're operating on. Like, is your moral operating principle like we just want to increase efficiency? So we're going to tax everyone in a way to basically account for the wasted opportunity cost, which brings up a lot of other questions of like, well, who decides what that is. But I think the Georgist argument is a little different. We're not necessarily like it is efficient, the tax we propose, but it actually stems kind of from a more, from a different place, a more kind of fundamental aspect of justice, you know? And from our perspective, if you work and you produce value, your work produced that value, right? And if you save money and accumulate capital in order to put that capital to work to receive a return, you've also provided something valuable to society, you know? You saved money so a factory could exist, right? You saved money so that a shipping company could get off off the ground. You know, those are valuable, contributed things, but nobody made the earth. The earth pre-exists all of us. And so someone who provides land actually does the opposite of providing land. They unprovide land, and then they charge you for opening the gate. And so the argument for charging people on the unimproved value of land is that we want to tax unproductive rent seeking. We want to tax non-produced assets because we think we want to encourage people to produce assets. We want to encourage people to produce labor, to produce capital. We want more of those things. And there's that aphorism that if you want less of something, you should tax it. So I mean, maybe there is a case for some kind of galaxy brain take of, you know, taxing unrealized opportunity costs or whatever, but I'm less interested in that. And my moral principles are more about, let's start with just taxing the things nobody has made and that people are gatekeeping access to. Let's tax essentially monopolies and rent seeking. And then if we still need to raise more taxes, we can talk about that later. But let's start with, let's start with just taxing the worst things in society and then stop taxing things we actually want more of because we have this mentality right now where everything's a trade off and we have to accept the downsides of income taxes, of sales taxes, of capital taxes because we just need the revenue and it has to come from somewhere. And my argument is it's like, it can come from a much better somewhere. So let's start with that.Dwarkesh Patel - 00:10:39: Yeah, yeah. So I guess if it was the case that we've implemented a land value tax and we're still having a revenue shortfall and we need another kind of tax and we're going to have to keep income taxes or capital gains taxes. Would you in that situation prefer a sort of tax where you're basically taxed on the opportunity costs of your time rather than the actual income you generated or the returns you would interest your generate in your capital? Lars Doucet - 00:11:04: No, I think probably not. I think you would probably want to go with some other just like simpler tax for the sake of it there's too many degrees of freedom in there. And it's like, we can talk about why I will defend the Georgist case for property tax assessments, you know, for land value tax. But I think it gets different when you start like judging what is the most valuable use of your time because that's a much more subjective question. Like you're like, okay, are you providing more value to society as being a podcaster or being a CS computer science person or creating a startup? It's like that may not be evident for some time. You know what I mean? Like I can't think of an example, but like think of people who were never successful during their lifetimes. I think the guy who invented what was it? FM radio, right? He threw himself out a window because he never got it really adopted during his lifetime but it went on to change everything, you know? So if we were taxing him during his lifetime based off of what he was doing of being a failure, like if Van Gogh was taxed of his like wasting his life as an artist as he thought he was, which ultimately led to his suicide, you know, a lot of these things are not necessarily realized at the time. And so I think that's, and you know, it would need a much bigger kind of bureaucracy to like figure that all out. So I think you should go with a more modest. I mean, I think after land value tax, you should do things like severance tax on natural resources and other taxes on other monopolies and rents. And so I think the next move after land value tax is not immediately to capital and income taxes and sales taxes, but to other taxes on other rents seeking and other land like assets that aren't literally physically land. And then only after you've done all of those, if you still, you know, absolutely then, then move on to, you know, the bad taxes. What is this, severance tax? Severance tax is a tax on the extraction of natural resources. Is what Norway does with their oil industry that has been massively successful and a key reason that Norway has avoided the resource curse? Yeah. Basically, it's, Georgist purist will say it's essentially a land value tax but of a different kind. A land value tax like you can't normally like extracts just like land like on this, in this house you're living on, you're like, you're not using up this land, but non-renewable resources you can use up. Yeah. You know, and so a severance tax is basically, Nestle should be charged a severance tax for the water they're using, for instance, you know, because all they're doing is enclosing a pre-existing natural resource that used to belong to the people that they've essentially enclosed and now they're just putting it in bottles and selling it to people. You know, they should be able to realize the value of the value add they give to that water, but not to just taking that resource away. Dwarkesh Patel - 00:13:53: No that makes sense. Okay, so let's go deep into the actual theory and logic of Georgism. Okay. One thing I was confused by is why property owners who have land in places that are really desirable are not already incentivized to make the most productive use of that land. So even without a property, sorry, a land tax, if you have some property in San Francisco incentives, let's go, why are you not incentivized to construct it to the fullest extent possible by the law, to, you know, collect rents anyways, you know what I mean? Like why are you keeping it that as a parking lot? Lars Doucet - 00:14:28: Right, right, right. So there's a lot of reasons. And one of them has to do with, there's an image in the book that this guy put together for me. I'll show it to you later. But what it does is that it shows the rate of return. What a land speculator is actually optimizing for is their rate of return, right? And so if land appreciates by 10% a year, you know, you're actually incentivized to invest in vacant land or a tear down property because the building of a tear down property is like worth negative value. So the land's cheaper because there's garbage on it, you know? Then you are to necessarily invest in a property and you're basically your marginal dollar is better spent on more land than it is on building up. Dwarkesh Patel - 00:15:16: But eventually shouldn't this be priced into the price of land so that the returns are no longer 10% or they're just like basically what you could get for any other asset. And at that point, then the rate of return is similar for building thingson top of your existing land than buying a new land because like the new land is like the, you know, that return has been priced into other land. Lars Doucet - 00:15:38: Well, I mean, arguably, empirically, we just don't see that, you know, and we see rising land prices as long as productivity and population increases. Those productivity and population gains get soaked into the price of the land. It's because of this phenomenon called Ricardo's Law of Rent and it's been pretty empirically demonstrated that basically, and it has to do with the negotiation power. But like why some people do of course, build and invest, you know, there's a lot of local laws that restrict people's ability to build. But another reason is just like, it also has to do with the existing part of it. It part of the effect is partially the existing property tax regime actively incentivizes empty lots because you have a higher tax burden if you build, right? So what actually happens is a phenomenon that's similar to oil wells, right? You have, it's not just because of property taxes, those do encourage you to keep it empty. But there's this phenomenon called land banking and waiting for the land to ripen, right? Sure, I could build it now, but I might have a lot of land parcels I've got. And I don't need to build it now because I think the prices might go up later and it would be better to build on it later than it is now. And it's not costing me anything to keep it vacant now. If I build now, I'm gonna have to pay a little bit more property taxes. And I know in three years that the price is gonna be even better. So maybe I'll wait to incur those construction costs then and right now I'm gonna focus more on building over here. And like I've got a lot of things to do, so I'm just gonna squat on it here. It's the same way I have, I'm squatting like, you know, I bought to my shame, like about 30 domain names, you know, most of them bought before I kind of got ontoGeorgism. And it's like, yeah, I'll pay 15 bucks a year to just hold it, why not? You know what I mean? I might use that someday. Right. And it's like, I should probably release all the ones I have no intent of using because I was looking for a domain for my startup the other day and every single two word.com is taken. Right, right. And it has been for like 10 years, you know, and it's a similar phenomenon. It's just like some of it is economic, rational following of incentives. And some of it is just it's like, well, this is a good asset. I'm just gonna hold on to it because why not? And no one is, and I don't have any pressure to build right now. And this happens on the upswing and on the downswing of cities. So while the population's growing and while the population's declining, people will just buy a lot of land and hold it out of use. Cause it's also just a great place to park money because it's an asset that you know if the population ever starts growing, it's gonna keep its value better than almost any other hard asset you have. Dwarkesh Patel - 00:18:16: Yep yep. I guess another like broader criticism of this way of thinking is, listen, this is all, and sorry for using these like podcast lingo of scarcity mindset, but this is all like scarcity mindset of, you know, land is limited. Well, why don't we just focus on the possibility of expanding the amount of usable land? I mean, there's like not really a shortage of land in you. Maybe there's a shortage of land in urban areas. But you know, why don't we like expand into the seas? And why don't we expand into the air and space? Why are we thinking in this sort of scarce mindset? Lars Doucet - 00:18:48: Right. Okay, so I love this question because actually our current status quo mindset is the scarcity mindset. And Georgism is the abundance mindset, right? And we can have that abundance if we learn to share the land. Because right now, you know, why don't we expand? And the answer is we've tried that. We've done it twice. And it's the story of America's frontier, right? And so like right now there's plenty of empty land in Nevada, but nobody wants it. And you have to ask why, right? You also have to ask the question of how did we have virtual housing crises in the Metaverse where they could infinitely expand all they want? Like how is that even possible, you know? And the answer has to do with what we call the urban agglomeration effect. What's really valuable is human relationships, proximity to other human beings, those dense networks of human beings. And so the idea is not necessarily that like, in a certain sense, the issue is that land is not an indistinguishable, fungible commodity. Location really matters. Or America has a finite amount of land, but it might as well be an infinite plane. We're not going to fill up every square inch of America for probably thousands of years if we ever do, right? But what is scarce is specific locations. They're non-fungible, you know? And to a certain extent, it's like, okay, if you don't want to live in New York, you can live in San Francisco or any other like big city. But what makes New York New York is non-fungible What makes San Francisco San Francisco is non-fungible That particular cluster of VCs in San Francisco until or unless that city completely explodes and that moves somewhere else to Austin or whatever, you know, at which point, Austin will be non-fungible. I mean, Austin is non-fungible right now. And so the point is that the way Georgism unlocks the abundance of it, let me talk about the frontier. We have done frontier expansion. That is why immigrants came over from Europe, you know, and then eventually the rest of the world, to America to, you know, settle the frontier. And the losers of that equation were, of course, the Indians who were already here and got kicked out. But that was theoriginal idea of America. And I like to say that America's tragedy, America's problem is that America is a country that has the mindset of being a frontier state, but is in fact a state which has lost its frontier. And that is why you have these conversations with people like boomers who are like, why can't the next generation just pull itself up by its bootstraps? Because America has had at least, I would say two major periods of frontier expansion. The first was the actual frontier, the West, the Oregon Trail, the covered wagons, you know, the displacement of the Indians. And so that was a massive time, that was the time in which Henry George was writing, was right when that frontier was closing, right? When all that land, that free land was being taken, and the advantages of that land was now being fully priced in. That is what it means for a frontier to close, is that now the good productive land, the value of it is fully priced in. But when the frontier is open, you can just go out there and take it, and you can get productive land and realize the gains of that. And the second frontier expansion was after Henry George's death, was the invention of the automobile, the ability to have a job in the city, but not have to live in the city. The fact that you could quickly travel in, like I commuted in to visit you here, right? That is because of the automobile frontier opening that has allowed me to live in some other city, but be able to do productive work like this podcast by driving in. But the problem is, sprawl can only take you so far, before that frontier as well closes, and by closes I don't mean suburban expansion stops. What I mean is that now, suburban homes, you fully price in the value of the benefits are able to accrue by having that proximity to a city, but still being able to live over here, through of course, for Ricardo's Law for it. Dwarkesh Patel - 00:22:37: Yeah, but I feel like this is still compatible with the story of, we should just focus on increased in technology and abundance, rather than trying to estimate how much rent is available now, given current status quo technologies. I mean, the car is a great example of this, but imagine if there were like flying cars, right? Like there's a, where's my flying car? There's like a whole analysis in that book about, you know, if you could, if people are still commuting like 20 minutes a day, you know, a lot more land is actually in the same travel distance as was before, and now all this land would be worth as much, even in terms of relationships that you could accommodate, right? So why not just build like flying cars instead of focusing on land rent? Lars Doucet - 00:23:21: Well, because these things have a cost, right? The cost of frontier expansion was murdering all the Indians and the cost of automobile expansion was climate change. You know, there has to be a price for that. And then eventually, the problem is you eventually, when you get to the end of that frontier expansion, you wind up with the same problem we had in the first place. Eventually, the problem is the first generation will make out like gangbusters if we ever invent flying cars, even better like Star Trek matter teleporters. You know, that'll really do it. Then you can really live in Nevada and have a job in New York. Yeah. There are some people who claim that Zoom is this, but it's not, you know, we've seen the empirical effects of that and it's like, it's the weakest like semi-frontier we've had and it's already closed. Because, because of Zoom, houses like this over in Austin have gone up in value because there is demand for them and there's demand for people to telecommute. And so anyone who, so the increased demand for living out in the suburbs is now basically priced in because of the Zoom economy. And so the thing is the first people who did that, who got there really quick, the first people to log in to the ultimate online server were able to claim that pace of the frontier and capture that value. But the next generation has to pay more in rent and more in home prices to get that. Dwarkesh Patel - 00:24:34: Actually, that raises another interesting criticism ofGeorgism, this is actually a paper from Zachary Gouchanar and Brian Kaplan, where it was titled the Cerseioretic critique of Georgism, and the point they made was one of these, like one way of thinking about the improvement to land is actually identifying that this land is valuable. Maybe because you realize it has like an oil well in it and maybe you realize that it's like the perfect proximity to these like Chinese restaurants and this mall and whatever. And then just finding which land is valuable is actually something that takes capital and also takes, you know, like you deciding to upend your life and go somewhere, you know, like all kinds of effort. And that is not factored into the way you would conventionally think of the improvements to land that would not be taxed, right? So in some sense, you getting that land is like a subsidy for you identifying that the land is valuable and can be used to productive ends. Lars Doucet - 00:25:30:Right, yeah, I know. So I've read that paper. So first of all, the first author of that Zachary Gouchanar yeah, I'm not been able to pin him down on what exactly meant on this, but he's made some public statements where he's revised his opinion since writing that paper and that he's much more friendly to the arguments ofGeorgism now than when he first wrote that paper. So I'd like to pin him down and see exactly what he meant by that because it was just a passing comment. But as regards Kaplan's critique, Kaplan's critique only applies to a 100% LVT where you fully capture all of the land value tax. And the most extreme Georgists I know are only advocating for like an 85% land value tax. That would still leave. And Kaplan doesn't account at all for the negative effects of speculation. He's making a speculation is good actually argument. And even if we grant his argument, he still needs to grapple with all the absolutely empirically observed problems of land speculation. And if we want to make some kind of compromise between maybe speculation could have this good discovery effect, there's two really good answers to that. First, just don't do 100% LVT, which we probably can't practically do anyway because of natural limitations just empirically, you know, in the signal. It's like you don't want to do 115% land value tax. That drives people off the land. So we want to make sure that we like have a high land value tax but make sure not to go over. And so that would leave a sliver of land rent that would still presumably incentivize this sort of thing. There's no argument for why 100% of the land rent is necessary to incentivize the good things that Kaplan was talking about. The second argument is when he talks about oil, well, we have the empirical evidence from the Norwegian massively successful petroleum model that shows in the case of natural resources how you should deal with this. And what Norway does is that they have a massive, massively huge severance tax on oil extraction. And according to Kaplan's argument, this should massively destroy the incentive for companies to go out there and discover the oil. And empirically, it doesn't. Now what Norway does is that they figured out, okay, so the oil companies, their argument is that we need the oil rents, right? We need these oil rents where we will not be incentivized for the massive capital cost of offshore oil drilling. Well, Norway's like, well, if you just need to cover the cost of offshore oil drilling, we'll subsidize that. We'll just pay you. We'll just pay you to go discover the oil. But when you find the oil, that oil belongs to the Norwegian people. Now you may keep some of the rents but most of it goes to the Norwegian people. But hey, all your R&D is free. All your discovery is free. If the problem is discovery, we just subsidize discovery. And then the oil companies are like, okay, that sounds like a great deal. We don't have to, because without that, what the oil companies do is that they're like, okay, we're taking all these risks. So I'm gonna sit on all these oil wells like people sitting on domain names because I might use them later and the price might go up later. But now because there's a huge severance tax, you're forced to drill now and you're actually, you're actual costs of discovery and R&D and all those capital costs are just taken care of. Dwarkesh Patel - 00:28:26: But isn't there a flip side to that where I mean, one of the economic benefits of speculation, obviously there's drawbacks. But one of the benefits is that it gets rid of the volatility and prices where our speculator will buy when it's cheap and sell when the price is high. And in doing so, they're kind of making the asset less volatile over time. And if you're basically going to tell people who have oil on their land, like we're gonna keep taxing you. If you don't take it out, you're gonna keep getting taxed. You're encouraging this massive glut of a finite resource to be produced immediately, which is bad. If you think we might need that reserve in the ground 20 years from now or 30 years from now, you know, went oil reserves were running low. Lars Doucet - 00:29:10: Not necessarily, you know? And so the problem is that speculation in the sense you're talking about if like encouraging people to do arbitrage is good for capital because we can make more capital. But we can't make more land and we can't make more non-renewable natural resources. And the issue in peer, and I just think the evidence just doesn't support that empirically because if anything, land speculation has causes land values to just constantly increase, not to find some natural part, especially with how easy it is to finance two thirds of bank loans just chase real estate up. And that's just like, if you just look at the history of the prices of, you know, of residential real estate in America, it's like, it's not this cyclical graph where it like keeps going back down. It keeps going back down, but it keeps going up and up and up, just on a straight line along with productivity. And it underlines and undergirds, major issues, everything that's driving our housing crisis, which then undergirds so much of inequality and pollution and climate change issues. And so with regards to speculations, like even if I just bite that bull and it's like, okay, speculation is good actually, I don't think anyone's made the case that speculators need to capture a hundred percent of the rents to be properly incentivized to do anything good that comes out of speculation. I think at some small reasonable percentage, you know, five to 10 percent of the rents, maybe 15 if I'm feeling generous, but I don't think anyone's empirically made the case that it should be a hundred percent, which is more or less a status quo. Dwarkesh Patel - 00:30:31:I mean, with regards to that pattern of the fact that the values tend to keep going up implies that there's nothing cyclical that the speculators are dampening. Lars Doucet - 00:30:41: Well, there are cycles to be sure, but it's not like, it's something that resets to zero. Dwarkesh Patel - 00:30:45: Yeah, but that's also true of like the stock market, right? Over time that goes up, but speculators are still have like an economic role to play in a stock market of making sure prices are, Lars Doucet - 00:30:55: I mean, the difference is that people are now paying an ever increasing portion of their incomes to the land sector. And that didn't used to be the case. And if it keeps going, it's going to be, I mean, you have people are now paying 50% of their income just for rent. And that's not sustainable in the long term. You're going to have the cycle you have there is revolution. You know, you, you know, Dwarkesh Patel - 00:31:16: (laughing) Lars Doucet - 00:31:17: I'm serious. like what happens is like you look through history, you either have land reform or you have revolution. And you know, it's, it's either like either you have a never ending cycle of, of, of transfers of income from the unlanded to the landed. And eventually the, the unlanded will not put up with that. You know, there was a real chance in the 19th century, at the end of the 19th century of America going full on socialist or communist and the only thing that saved us. What, and George's argument was like, it's either Georgism or communism. And if you want to save capitalism and not go toTotalitarian, we need Georgismand then what George failed to anticipate was, you, of course, the automobile. And the automobile kicked the can down another generation, another couple generations, right? And it came at the cost of sprawl. And that made everyone feel like we had solved the issue. But basically we just, and the cost of sprawl are enormous in terms of pollution and poor land use. Just look at Houston right now, right? But now we've come at the end of that frontier and now we're at the same question. And it's like, you see this research in interest in leftism in America and that's not a coincidence, right? Because the rent is too damn high and poor people and poor people and young people feel really, really shoved out of the promise and social contract that was given to their parents and they're jealous of it and they're wondering where it went. Dwarkesh Patel - 00:32:36: Yeah, yeah. Actually, you just mentioned that a lot of bank loans are given basically so you can like get a mortgage and get a house that's like towards land. There was an interesting question on Twitter that I thought was actually pretty interesting about this. I can't find the name of the person who asked it. So sorry, I can't give you credit, but they basically asked if that's the case and if most bank loans are going towards helping you buy land that's like artificially more expensive, but now you implement a land value tax and all these property values crash. Oh yeah. Well, when we see just, and then all these mortgages are obviously they can't pay them back. Lars Doucet - 00:33:13: Right, right, right. Are we gonna destroy the banking sector? Dwarkesh Patel - 00:33:15: Exactly. We'll have like a great, great depression.Lars Doucet - 00:33:17: Well, I mean, if you, okay, so like this is, this is kind of like, I mean, I'm not, I'm not trying to compare landlords to slave owners or something, but it's like, it's like the South had an entire economy based off of slavery. This thing that like we now agree was bad, right? And it's like we shouldn't have kept slavery because the, the South, the, like it really disrupted the Southern Economy when we got rid of slavery, but it was still the right thing to do. And so I mean, there is no magic button I could push as much as I might like to do so that will give us 100% land value tax everywhere in America tomorrow. So I think the actual path towards a Georgist Future is gonna have to be incremental. There'll be enough time to unwind all those investments and get to a more sane banking sector. So I mean, like if we were to go overnight, yeah, I think there would be some shocks in the banking sector and I can't predict what those would be, but I also don't think that's a risk that's actually gonna happen. Because like we just, we just cannot make a radical change like that on all levels overnight. Dwarkesh Patel - 00:34:13: Yeah yeah, yeah. Okay, so let's get back to some of these theoretical questions. One I had was, I guess I don't fully understand the theoretical reason for thinking that you can collect arbitrarily large rents. Why doesn't the same economic principle of competition, I get that there's not infinite landowners, but there are multiple landowners in any region, right? So if for the same reason that profit is competed away in any other enterprise, you know, if one landowner is extracting like $50 a profit a month, and another landowner is extracting, you know, like whatever, right? Like a similar amount of $50. One of them, and they're both competing for the same tenant. One of them will decrease their rent so that the tenant will come to them and the other one will do the same and the bidding process continues until all the profits are, you know,bidded away. Lars Doucet - 00:35:04: Right, so this is Ricardo's law front, right? And there's a section on in the book with a bunch of illustrations you can show. And so the issue is that we can't make more land, right? And so you might be like, well, there's plenty of land in Nevada, but the point is there's only so much land in Manhattan. Dwarkesh Patel - 00:35:19: But the people who have land inManhattan, why aren't they competing against themselves or each other? Lars Doucet - 00:35:23: Right, well, what they do is because the nature of the scarcity of there's only so many locations in Manhattan and there's so many people who want to live there, right? And so all the people who want to live there have to outbid each other. And so basically, so like, let me give a simple agricultural example model. And then I will explain how the agricultural model translates to a residential model. Basically, when you are paying to live in an urban area, or even a suburban area like here in Austin, what you're actually paying for is the right to have proximity to realize the productive capacity of that location. IE, I want to live in Austin because I can have access to a good job, you know what I mean? Or whatever is cool about Austin, a good school, those amenities. And the problem is you have to pay for those and you have to outbid other people who are willing to pay for those. And Ricardo's Rolf Rent says that the value of the amenities and the productivity of an area, as it goes up, that gets soaked into the land prices. And the mechanism by that is that it's like, okay, say I want to buy a watermelon, right? And there's only one watermelon left out bid that guy. But the watermelon growers can be like, oh, a lot of people want watermelon. So next season, there's going to be more watermelons because he's going to produce more watermelons. But because there's only so many locations in Austin, you know, within the natural limits of our transportation network, basically it forces the competition on the side of the people who are, essentially the tenants, right? It forces us into one side of competition with each other. And that, and so there's an example of like, a simple agricultural example is like, okay, say there is a common field that anyone can work on and you can make 100 units of wealth if you work on it, right? So, and there's another field that you can also learn 100 units of wealth in, but it's owned by a landowner. Why would you, why would you go and work on the landowners when you're going to have to pay them rent? You wouldn't pay them any rent at all. You would work on the field that's free, but if the landowner buys that field and now your best opportunity is a field that's only worth a free field that will produce 10 units of wealth, now he can charge you 90 units of wealth becauseyou have no opportunity to go anywhere else. And so basically as more land gets bought and subject to private ownership in an area, landowners over time get to increase the rent, not to a maximum level, there are limits to it. And the limits is what's called the margin of production, which is basically you can charge up to, and this is where the competition comes in, the best basic like free alternative, you know, and that's usually, you can realize that geographically, like out on the margins of Austin, there's marginal land that basically is available for quite cheap, you know, and it might be quite far away, and it used to be not so quite far away 20, 30 years ago, you know, and so as that margin slowly gets privatized, landowners can charge up to that margin. The other limit is subsistence, that can't charge more than you're actually able to pay, but the basic example is that, so this is why this is how frontier expansion works. When the entire continent's free, the first settler comes in, strikes a pick in the ground, keeps all of their wealth, but as more and more of it gets consolidated, then landowners are able to charge proportionately more until they're charging essentially up to subsistence. Dwarkesh Patel - 00:38:51: Yeah, does that explain property values in San Francisco? I mean, they are obviously very high, but I don't feel like they're that high where this offer engineers were working at Google or living as subsistence levels, neither are they at the margin of reduction where it's like, this is what it would cost to live out in the middle of California, and then commute like three hours to work or something. Lars Doucet - 00:39:13: Right, well, so it has to do with two things. So first of all, it's over the long run, and so it's like, you've had a lot of productivity booms in San Francisco, right? And so it takes some time for that to be priced in, you know, and it can be over a while, but given a long enough time period it'll eventually get there. And then when we're talking about stuff, it's also based off of the average productivity. The average resident of San Francisco is maybe not as productive as a high, and like basically doesn't earn as high an income necessarily as a high income product worker. And so this means that if you are a higher than productive, higher than average productivity person, it's worth it to live in the expensive town because you're being paid more than the average productivity that's captured in rent, right? But if you're a low, if you're lower than average productivity, you flee high productive areas. You go to more marginal areas because those are the only places you can basically afford to make a living. Dwarkesh Patel - 00:40:06: Okay, that's very interesting. That's actually one of the questions I was really curious about. So I'm glad to hear an answer on that. Another one is, so the idea is, you know, land is soaking up the profits that capitalists and laborers are entitled to in the form of rent. But when I look at the wealthiest people in America, yeah, there's people who own a lot of land, but they bought that land after they became wealthy from doing things that were capital or labor, depending on how you define starting a company. Like sure, Bill Gates owns a lot of land in Montana or whatever, but like the reason he has all that wealth to begin with is because he started a company, you know, that's like basically labor or capital,however you define it? Right. So how do you explain the fact that all the wealthy people are, you know, capitalists or laborers? Lars Doucet - 00:40:47: Well, so the thing is, one of the big missed apprehensions people have is that, when they think of billionaires, they think of people like Bill Gates and Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, those are actually the minority billionaires, most billionaires or hedge funds are people involved in hedge funds. You know, bankers and what are bankers, most what are two thirds of banks? It's real estate, you know? And so, but more to your point, like if I, if it is like point that directly into it, it's like, I don't necessarily have a problem with the billionaire existing. You know what I mean? If someone like genuinely like bring something new into the world and like, you know, I don't necessarily buy the narrative that like billionaires are solely responsible for everything that comes out of their company, you know, I think they like to present that image. But I don't necessarily have a problem with a billionaire existing. I have a problem with, you know, working class people not being able to feed their families, you know, and so like the greater issue is the fact that the rent is too high rather than that Jeff Bezos is obscenely rich. Dwarkesh Patel - 00:41:45:No, no, I guess my point was in that, like, I'm not complaining that your solution would not fix the fact that billionaires are this. I also like that there's billionaires. What I'm pointing out is it's weird that, if you're theory of, like, where all the sort of plus in our society is getting, you know, given away is that it's going to landowners. And yet the most wealthy people in our society are not landowners. Doesn't that kind of contradict your theory? Lars Doucet - 00:42:11: Well, a lot of the wealthy people in our society are landowners, right? And it's just like, it's not the, so the, so the thing is is that basically making wealth off land is a way to make wealth without being productive, right? And so my point is is that, so like you said in your interview with Glazer that it's like, okay, the Googleplex, like the value of that real estate is probably not, you know, compared that to like the market cap of Google. But now compare the value of all the real estate in San Francisco to the market caps to some of those companies in there, you know, look at the people who are charging rent to people who work for Google. That's where the money's actually going, is that, and, and, you know, investors talk about this is that it's like, I have to, like, if you earn $100,000 in San Francisco as a family of four, you are below the poverty line, right? You know, the money is going to basically upper middle class Americans and upper class Americans who own tons of residential land and are basically, and also the old and the wealthy, especially, are essentially this entire class of kind of hidden landed gentry that are extracting wealth from the most productive people in America and young people, especially. And, and it is creates really weird patterns, especially with like service workers who can't afford to live in the cities where their work is demanded. Dwarkesh Patel - 00:43:30: Yeah. Okay. So what do you think of this take? This might be economically efficient. In fact, I think it probably is economically efficient, but the effect of the land value tax would be to shift, to basically shift our sort of societal subsidy away from upper middle class people who own, happen to own land in urban areas and shift that to the super wealthy and also super productive people who will like control the half acre that Google owns and like mountain view. So it's kind of like a subsidy, not subsidy, but it's easing the burden on super productive companies like Google and so that they can make even cooler products in the future. But it is in some sense that's a little aggressive, you're going from upper middle class to like, you know, tech billionaire, right? But it's still be economically efficient to do that. Lars Doucet - 00:44:18: Well, no, I don't quite agree with that because it's like, although there are a lot of upper middle class Americans who own a lot of the land wealth, it's not the case that they own where the majority of the land wealth is. The majority of the land wealth in urban areas is actually in commercial real estate. Is the central business district, if you, and I work in mass appraisal, so I've seen this myself in the models we build is that if you look at the transactions in cities and then you plot where the land value is and like a graph, it looks like this. And this is the city center and that's not a residential district. So the residential districts are sucking up a lot of land value and the rent is toodamn high. But the central business district and this even holds even in the age of Zoom, it's taken a tumble, but it's starting from a very high level. That central residential, I'm not residential, but commercial real estate is super valuable. Like orders, like an order of magnitude more valuable than a lot of the other stuff. And a lot of it is very poorly used.In Houston especially, it's incredibly poorly used. We have all these central parking lots downtown. That is incredibly valuable real estate. And just a couple of speculators are just sitting on it, doing nothing with it. And that could be housing, that could be offices, that could be amenities, that could be a million sorts of things. And so when you're talking about a land value tax, those are the people who are going to get hit first. And those are people who are neither nice, nice, friendly upper middle class Americans, nor are they hardworking industrialists making cool stuff. They're people who are doing literally nothing. Now, if you do a full land value tax, yeah, it's going to shift the burden in society somewhat. But I feel that most analyses of property taxes and land value taxes that conclude that they are regressive, I think that's mostly done on the basis of our current assessments. And I feel like our assessments could be massively approved and that if we improve the assessments, we can show where most of our land values actually concentrated. And then we can make decisions about exactly, are we comfortable with these tax shifts? Dwarkesh Patel - 00:46:18: Yeah, yeah. Hey guys, I hope you're enjoying the conversation so far. If you are, I would really, really appreciate it if you could share the episode with other people who you think might like it. Put the episode in a group chat you have with your friends, post it on Twitter, send it to somebody who think might like it. All of those things helps that a ton. Anyways, back to the conversation. So a while back I read this book, how Asia works. You know,Lars Doucet - 00:46:45: I'm a fan. Dwarkesh Patel - 00:46:47: Yeah, and one of the things, I think Joseph Steadwell was going out there, what are the things he talks about is he's trying to explain why some Asian economies grew, gangbusters in the last 20th century. And one of the things he points to is that these economies implemented land reform were basically, I guess they were distributed land away from, I guess the existing aristocracy and gentry towards the people who are like working the land. And while I was reading the book at the time, I was kind of confused because, you know, we've like, there's something called like the Kostian. The Kostian, I forget the name of the argument. Basically, the idea is, regardless of who initially starts off with a resource, the incentive of that person will be to, for him to like give that resource, lend out that resource to be worked by that person who can make most productive use of it. And instead of what was pointing out that these like small, you know, like these peasant farmers basically, they will pay attention to detail of crop rotation and making the maximum use of this land to get like the maximum produce. Whereas if you're like a big landowner, you will just like try to do something mechanized. It's not nearly as effective. And in a poor country, what you have is a shitton of labor. So you want something that's like labor intensive. Anyways, backing up a bit, I was confused while I was reading the book because I was like, well, wouldn't the, wouldn't, what you would expect to happen in a market that basically the peasants get alone from the bank to work to, I guess, rent out that land. And then they are able to make that land work more productively than the original landowner. Therefore, they are able to like make a profit and everybody benefits basically. Why isn't there a co-scient solution to that? Lars Doucet - 00:48:24: Because any improvement that the peasants make to the land will be a signal to the landowner to increase the rent because of Ricardo's law of rent. Yep. And that's exactly what happened in Ireland when, and George talks about this in progress and poverty, is that a lot of people were like, why was there famine in Ireland? It's because the Irish are bad people. Why didn't they, they're lazy? Why didn't they improve? And it's like because if you improve the land, all that happens is you still are forced into one side of competition and the rent goes out. Dwarkesh Patel - 00:48:50: Yep. OK. That makes sense. Is the goal that the taxes you would collect with the land value tax? Are they meant to replace existing taxes or are they meant to give us more services like UBI? Because they probably can't do both, right? Like you either have to choose getting rid of existing taxes or getting more.. Lars Doucet - 00:49:08: Well, it depends how much UBI you want. You know what I mean? It's like you can, you know, it's a sliding skill. It's like how many taxes do you want to replace versus how much? Like, I mean, you can have a budget there. It's like if you can raise, you know, I show in the book the exact figures of how much I think land value tax could raise. And I forget the exact figures, but like you can pull up a graph and overlay it here of, you know, whether you're talking about the federal level or federal local and state, you know, there's $44 trillion of land value in America. And I believe we can raise about $4 trillion in land rents annually with 100% land value tax. And we would probably do less than that in practice. But even on the low end, I forget what figure I quote for the low end, like you could fully pay for any one of social security, Medicare plus Medicaid together, so the second one is healthcare or defense. Entirely with the lowest estimate of what I think land rents could raise. And then I think you can actually raise more than that because I think, and I give an argument in the book for why I think it's closer to like $4 trillion. And that could pay for all three and have room over for a little bit of extra. And so I mean, it's up to you, like, that's a policy decision of whether you want to spend it on spending, whether you want to spend it on offsetting taxes or whether you want to spend it on UBI. I think the best political solution, because like if I bite the bullet that there might be some regressivity issues left over, you want to do what's called a UBI or what, you know, in George's time was called a citizen's dividend, right? You know, this will smooth over any remaining regressivity issues. And then, but I very much am in favor of getting rid of some of these worst taxes, you know, not just because they have dead weight loss and land value tax doesn't, but also because there's this tantalizing theory called ATCORE- All taxes come out of rent, which suggests that if you reduce other taxes, it increases land values, which means that if it's true in the strongest sense, it means the single tax,right? Land value tax replaced all taxes would always work. And I'm not sure if I buy that, I want to see some empirical evidence, but I think at least some weak form of it holds, so that when you offset other worst taxes, not only do you get rid of the dead weight loss from those, but you also wind up raising at least a little bit more in land value tax revenue. Dwarkesh Patel - 00:51:20: Yes, yeah. I mean, as a libertarian, or I guess somebody who has like libertarian tendencies, my concern would basically be like, this obviously seems better than our current regime of taxing things that are good, basically capital income. But my concern is the way I'm guessing something like this would be implemented is it would be added on top of rather than repealing those taxes. And then, yeah, I guess like we would want to ensure. Lars Doucet - 00:51:44: I get this one a lot. Yeah, no. And so I have, you know, I've been a libertarian in my past, and I have a soft spot for libertarianism. I used to be a Ron Paul guy, I went back in the day for a hot minute. And so I think the thing to suede your concerns there is what is land value tax? It's property tax without a tax on buildings. Yep. So the natural path to actually getting land value tax comes from reforming existing property tax regimes by reducing an entire category of taxation, which is the tax on buildings. And so that's what I think is the most plausible way to get a land value tax, like in Texas here, if we were to start by just capture the same, like what I actually proposed for our first step is not 100% land value tax federally. I don't know, even know how you get to there. I think what you actually do is you start in places like Texas and like here, legalized split-rate property tax, thus, re-tax buildings and land at separate rates, set the rate on buildings to zero, collect the same dollar amount of taxes. Let's start there. There's proposals to do this in various cities around the nation right now. I think there's one in Virginia. There's a proposal to do in Detroit. I think there's some talk of it in Pennsylvania and some places. And I'd like to see those experiments run and observe what happens there. I think we should do it in Texas. And that would be something that I think would be very friendly to the libertarian mindset, because very clearly we're no new revenue, right? And we're exempting an entire category of taxation. Most people are gonna see savings on their tax bill and the people who own those parking lots downtown in Houston are gonna be paying most of the bill. Dwarkesh Patel - 00:53:14: Yeah, by the way, what do you make of, is there a good, Georgist's critique of government itself? In a sense that government is basically the original land squatter and it's basically charging the rest of us rents or staying on rent that. It's neither productively improving. As much as at least it's getting rents or must work. Like if you think about, even your landlord usually is not charging you 40%, which is what the income tax rate is in America, right? And it's like almost, you can view the land lord of America. Lars Doucet - 00:53:46: Well, I mean, it's like, I mean, if you wanna take the full, like if you're asking is Georgism compatible with full anarcho capitalist libertarianism, probably not 100%, I think we can have a little government as a treat. But I think it's not a coincidence that if you look throughout America's founding, I don't think it's a coincidence that originally, like people talk about it's like, oh, it used to be only white men who could vote. White land-owning men could vote. Like a government by the landowners for the landowners of the landowners, right? And that's very much kind of the traditional English system of government, just neo-feudalism, right? And so I think Georgism certainly has a critique of that, that it's like government is often instituted to protect the interests of landowners. But what's interesting is that if you look throughout history, I'm very much a fan of democracy, rule of the people. And it's like, I think we, you know, I kind of sympathize with Milton Friedman here, where he's like, you know, he might want to have less government than we have now, but he doesn't believe we can have no government. And then he goes on to endorse, you know, the land value taxes, the least worse tax, because income tax especially, I feel like is a gateway drug to the surveillance state, you know, one of the advantages of land value taxes you don't even care necessarily who owns the land. You're just like, hey, 4732 Apple Street, make sure the check shows up in the mail. I don't care how many shell companies in the Bahamas, you've like obscured your identity with, just put the check in the mail, Mr. Address, you know, whereas the income tax needs to do this full anal probe on everyone in the country, and then audits the poor at a higher rate than the rich, and it's just this horrible burden we have, and then it'll, it gives the government this kind of presumed right to know what you're doing about everything you're doing in this massive invasion of privacy.Dwarkesh Patel - 00:55:42: Yeah, no, that's fascinating. I speak to you, I have shell companies in the Bahamas, by the way. Yes. There's an interesting speculation about what would happen if crypto really managed to divorce and private, I guess, make private your log of transactions or whatever. And then, I guess the idea is the only legible thing left to the government is land, right? So it would like force the government to institute a land value tax, because like you can't tax income or capital gains anymore, that's all on like the blockchain and the right, right? It's cured in some way. And yeah, yeah, so that, I mean, it's like crypto the gateway drug to George's own, because it'll just move income and capital to the other realm. Lars Doucet - 00:56:20: Yeah, it's just so weird. I've gone on record as being a pretty big crypto skeptic. But I have noticed a lot of crypto people get into Georgism home. I mean, not the least of which is Vitalik Buterin and you endorse my book, who's a huge fan of Georgism home. It's like, I'll take fans from anywhere, even from people I've had sparring contests with. I'm generally pretty skeptical that crypto can fulfill all its promises. I am excited by those promises, and if they can prove me wrong, that would be great. And I think there's some logic to what you're saying is that if we literally couldn't track transactions, then I mean, I guess we don't have much the tracks accept land. I don't think that'll actually come to pass just based off of recent events. You know, and that's basically my position on it. But I have noticed a lot of crypto people, just they're some of the easiest people to convince about George's home, which was completely surprising to me. But I've learned a lot by talking to them. It's very interesting and weird. Yeah, yeah. Dwarkesh Patel - 00:57:16: So there was some other interesting questions from Twitter. Ramon Dario Iglesias asks, how do you transition from a world today where many Americans have homes where it really starts sparring to have homes to a world where, I mean, obviously, it would be like a different regime. They might still have homes, but who knows? Like, their property will be just be like, think I thought I'm going to complete a different way. How do you transition to that? Like, what would that transition look like for most Americans? Lars Doucet - 00

There are some cities in the U.S. where the price of a home is actually…falling.  It's the business news headlines for Monday the 6th of June, thanks for being with us! And, here's what we've got for you today:  The top 5 cities where housing costs are going down; The two-story Taco Bell drive through...amazing; Online grocery sales still strong; But, the competition is fierce; Unions cry foul on a Starbucks decision; The 10-year T-Bill and the markets; New stuff for the Apple Watch; The Wall Street Report; Live audio listening going down. Those stories plus you'll meet businessman, author and keynote speaker Jack Stack who recently surprised some 500 people gathered at The Central Iowa Business Conference with two words.  What are they and why should you pay attention?  To listen, click here.  Thanks for listening! The award winning Insight on Business the News Hour with Michael Libbie is the only weekday business news podcast in the Midwest. The national, regional and some local business news along with long-form business interviews can be heard Monday - Friday. You can subscribe on PlayerFM, Podbean, iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio. And you can catch The Business News Hour Week in Review each Sunday Noon on News/Talk 1540 KXEL. The Business News Hour is a production of Insight Advertising, Marketing & Communications. You can follow us on Twitter @IoB_NewsHour.     

The theme this week on the Retirement Quick Tips Podcast is: How to earn more on your cash. So far this week, I've covered money market funds, high yield savings accounts, and floating rate funds. These are all investments that offer liquidity and a high level of safety without tying up your money for a specific period of time.  If you want any hoping of earning more that 1% on your cash right now, you'll want to start venturing into tying up your money for a set period of time - say 3 or 6 months.  A great way to do that with an investment that is short term - in this case only invested for 6 months, and offers the highest degree of safety - backed by the full faith and credit of the US government - still the safest place to put your money in the world - then you'll want to consider T Bills.  T bills are treasury bills (aka bonds) that have a maturity of 1 year or less. What make a T bill different than a regular treasury bond is simply the shorter term of the investment period.  Right now you can purchase a 6 month T Bill and earn an annualized yield of 1.435%. Not too bad for a risk-free way to invest your cash for the next 6 months in this very low interest rate environment.  Despite their safety and relatively decent rates right now, there are a couple drawbacks to these investments:  could lose money if you need to sell early, and  if you buy short term treasury bills directly from the treasury, there are no fees, but it's one more place you'll need to open an account and keep track your funds  You can buy other investments like mutual funds and exchange traded funds that own T Bills, so you don't need to buy the T Bills directly from the treasury and open a new account, but the added fees on these investments will reduce the yield.  That's it for today. Thanks for listening! My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the Retirement Quick Tips podcast.  ---------- >>> Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2DI2LSP >>> Subscribe on Amazon Alexa: https://amzn.to/2xRKrCs >>> Visit the podcast page: https://truenorthra.com/podcast/  ---------- Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance

The Reserve Bank of India had last month auctioned three Treasury Bills (T-Bills) at higher cut-off yields, dropping some hints on the hardening of short-term interest rates. The government raised ₹10,000 crore through this auction. But how does it work, let us see. Treasury Bills are short-term borrowing tools for the government. They are promissory notes with guaranteed repayment at a later date. They have a maximum tenure of 364 days; issued in three maturities — 91-days, 182-days and 364-days. Treasury Bills are issued at a discount to their original value and the buyer gets the original value upon maturity. Let us explain it through an example. Say, the government will sell Rs 100 T-Bill at a discounted price of Rs 95 in the money market, but after the maturity of say 91 days, it will buy back the T-Bill at its original price of Rs 100. So, the buyer who bought the T-bill for Rs 95, stands to make a profit of Rs 5 when the government buys back the T-Bill. T-Bills don't generate any interest and are zero-coupon securities. They are a safe investment instrument as they are a liability to the government. They are backed by the highest authority in the country and have to be paid back even in times of a financial crisis. But long term treasury bonds have often been criticised for their low returns. While slamming the low yield in his country, famous US investor and fund manager William Gross had last year termed it as an “investment garbage”. And he had also questioned if the stock markets will follow suit? Short-term capital gains realised through T-Bills are subject to the STCG tax at rates applicable as per the income tax slab of the investor. However, retail investors aren't required to pay TDS upon redemption of T-Bills.  Watch video

Hello everyone. It's Bill Thompson, T Bill. Here is what we cover on today's session. General Electric's reverse stock split, a rarity for an S&P 500 company, and why reverse stock splits often don't work. Coca-Cola possibly repeating its biggest mistake ever. Applebee's benefiting from a new hit song and what company saw a 65% increase in profits from E.T. Amazon offering a $2,000,000 vaccination lottery to its front-line workers. A long-established company changing its ticker symbol due to a cryptocurrency.                                                                 Bill

Hello everyone. It's Bill Thompson, T Bill. Here is what we cover on today's session. The potential pullback of the Federal Reserve's Quantitative Easing program and what that means for you and your money. A simple strategy to potentially save hundreds of thousands of dollars on a mortgage and potentially make yourself a millionaire in the process. The labor report and the reason behind the markets muted reaction. The inflation focus of the market in coming days.

Hello everyone, It's Bill Thompson, T Bill. On today's session, I explain Cryptocurrencies, Blockchains, and Crypto Mining. I also provide some comments on the reinstatement of the federal government debt ceiling as well as why the debt levels of the United States federal government may not be exactly as it first appears. I also make some comments in regards to PepsiCo's announcement of the sale of its Tropicana and other juice divisions for $3.3 Billion as well as general divestitures in the food and beverage industry.                                                                    Bill

Hello everyone, it's Bill Thompson, T Bill. Today, I talk about the recent price movement in Robin Hood stock as well as the talk of Main Street and Wall Street investors possibly coming together to punish the company itself by shorting the stock. I discuss why that may or may not happen and also explain short selling in general, including an explanation of a short squeeze. I also discuss the upcoming labor report and why unemployment numbers are not always what they seem. Bill

Hello everyone, It's Bill Thompson, T Bill, and welcome to Plain Market Talk. Today, I talk about a penny than may be going through your pockets that could be worth more than $1,000,000. I also discuss the $1.1 billion infrastructure package about to be passed by Congress, along with six companies that may directly benefit from it,  as well as its long-term financial and economic implications. I talk about a new technology to pull carbon out of the atmosphere and how this may be a near and intermediate term play for rapid stock price appreciation. I also discuss strategies to hold on to what you have made from a greatly increased investment. I also talk about an alleged investment scam that supposedly bilked investors out of $12,000,000 involving an 86-year-old mother and her 54-year-old son touting their pair of stock picking supercomputers and provide a lesson on what to do if something sounds too good to be true.         Bill

Hello everyone. It's Bill Thompson, T Bill, and welcome to Plain Market Talk, where I will provide a straight-forward interpretation and analysis of current market news based on my background as a retired Wall Street Stockbroker with almost 50 years of experience and I will also provide business lessons to help you become much more successful with your personal finance, trading, and investments. These lessons will be useful for years to come so I would encourage anyone to go back and check out any missed sessions or perhaps relisten to areas of particular interest While discussing current market news and events, I will be covering basically all subject areas of business, finance, and investments and will be covering stocks, bonds, mutual funds, options and other derivatives, fundamental analysis and investing, technical analysis, day trading, cryptocurrencies, commodities and many more. I started in the industry in 1975 when I was only 16 years old and became a licensed stockbroker when I was 18. I have an MBA in Finance as well as a Bachelors Degree in Business Administration with double majors in Finance and Management. In 2012, I wrote a best-selling book called, ‘Stock Trading Order Types' and am also a life-long musician and am a voting member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and cast ballots each year for the Grammy Awards and any music used on the broadcasts are my own compositions So again, I'm Bill Thompson, T Bill, and welcome to Plain Market Talk.

Yesterday it was "May the Fourth be with you" and today it's happy Cinco de Mayo...which is not Mexican Independence day...you knew that...right?  Here's what we've got for you today: The Peloton Recall explained; GM has big plans for this decade; Biden, Climate and Business; Facebook and former President Trump; J.C. Penny cuts more employees; The jobs report and the T-Bill...confusing; Jessica Alba has a hot day; The Wall Street Report; And...not enough babies you guys. Thanks for listening.  The award winning Insight on Business the News Hour with Michael Libbie is the only weekday business news podcast in the Midwest. The national, regional and some local business news along with long-form business interviews can be heard Monday - Friday. You can subscribe on PlayerFM, Podbean, iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio. And you can catch The Business News Hour Week in Review each Sunday Noon on News/Talk 1540 KXEL. The Business News Hour is a production of Insight Advertising, Marketing & Communications. You can follow us on Twitter @IoB_NewsHour.

On today’s show we’re talking about interest rates again. Yesterday, the Federal Reserve announced another 0.25% drop in the benchmark lending rate. A number of listeners are wondering what the Fed rate has to do with every day lending rates. Some consumer credit card rates have increased in recent months at a time when the Fed rate was falling. So on today’s show we’re going to read directly from the Federal Reserve’s prepared statement, and then give our interpretation of what it means. In his prepared remarks, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell refers to the committee that governs the Federal Reserve. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) consists of twelve members--the seven members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; and four of the remaining eleven Reserve Bank presidents, who serve one-year terms on a rotating basis. So these 12 people have more influence on the financial world than perhaps any other non-elected officials on the planet. So what does this all mean? In my view, we can expect interest rates to remain low for some time to come. While there has been stimulus in the economy since the summer, it’s not uniform. We are seeing increased demand in real estate, which is very sensitive to interest rates. Real estate refinance activity in July and August was up 75% compared with June. Manufacturing numbers are down. Some are blaming it on the trade negotiations. But in truth, I believe the inventory numbers are the real reason. We’re seeing troubles in the automotive sector. When I drive past car dealerships, whether it’s in rural upstate New York, or in the core of a major city, dealership lots are literally bursting at the seams with inventory. I haven’t seen dealer lots this jammed with inventory in a long time. I’m seeing manufacturers offering very aggressive deals in order to move inventory off the lots. So back to real estate. As a real estate investor, your borrowing cost is usually tied to one of two indexes. Most short term loans, like home equity lines of credit and other revolving credit lines in real estate are tied to Libor. That is the London Interbank Overnight Rate. This is the lending rate that banks use to pay for money that is stuck between accounts on an overnight basis. Long terms lending rates for permanent financing tend to be indexed to the 10 year treasury bill rate. So if you’re looking for long term permanent financing, whether it’s conventional, or an insured non-recourse loan When the Fed sets rates, they’re really setting the rate at which the US government borrows money. Ultimately that trickles through to the T-Bill rate, both short and long term US government bonds. As a real estate investor, you’re in a great position to lock into some great terms on long term financing, and even some strong terms on short term financing.

The Days Ahead: More corporate earnings. Initial estimate of Q2 GDP. If you want to get future updates about new episodes, subscribe to our email newsletter: bandjadvisors.com/subscribe One-Minute Summary: There should have been plenty to upset markets this week. The President questioned the level of the dollar and Fed policy, trade tariffs rose again, the EU made a strong trade deal with Japan, housing starts were down, retail sales weak and one of the regional Fed surveys showed that companies are seeing higher prices which they do not expect to be able to pass on (which means a margin squeeze). The yield curve continued to flatten. Netflix had a bad quarter. Yet things kept moving along well enough. Why? Let’s deal with the first one. The President can criticize the Fed for raising rates but we think Chairman Powell will disregard any and all such comments. He’s going nowhere and the Administration can do nothing about Fed policy. They're stuck with him. On the others, the market is growing sanguine. The trade pressures are built into the market’s wall of worry for now. Sure, things could get worse but the underlying economy is moving slowly forward and, as we've said before, companies are reporting great earnings. Thank the tax cuts. The path of rate increases is steady and Chairman Powell reassured markets and politicians not to expect policy surprises. We did see some increase in short-term rates with 3-month Treasury Bills trading above 2% for the first time since September 2009. This was expected. So far this year, the Treasury market has had to absorb $720bn of net new public debt. That’s what happens if you cut taxes in a late-cycle economy. In the same period last year it was -$74bn. Last week, there was $22bn of T-Bill (i.e. 3 month bills) net new issuance and there’s $130bn coming in the next two months. So why aren't rates higher? Because the economy is expected to slow, real wages are flat and because the Fed has clearly signaled where it expects equilibrium rates to settle: not much above where we are. Did you like this podcast? Be sure to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts: bandjadvisors.com/itunes Ask us your financial questions in your review and we'll answer them in the next episode. We appreciate your feedback! Learn more about Brouwer & Janachowski and our wealth management services: www.bandjadvisors.com

The recent election in Italy has thrown Europe into turmoil. The result has been a flight of capital from the Euro in US Treasuries, lower the yield on 10 year T-Bills. Since many commercial loans have their rate linked to the 10 year Treasury rate, a fall in T-Bill rates directly helps US Real Estate Investors. See how you can capitalize on this temporary situation.

For the past 5–10 years, trend followers have had to deal with a double-whammy — poor markets and no interest on excess cash. However, it appears at least one of those is changing for the better. Interest rates are rising. Today, the 3-month T-Bill yields ~1.75%. Even though this is pretty low on a historic basis, this is a welcoming sign given it sat near zero percent from 2009–2016. https://medium.com/@mmelissinos/a-trend-followers-secret-weapon-makes-a-comeback-fc3e064c3c29

In our 1st chat, Greg Chats Cash with Annaliese Bronz & Mr. T Bill about Spending Habits, Wealth Mindsets, & some ways the rich manage their money. Leave a comment about ideas that are new to you!

Today I’m here with Shannon Pohl from Caliber Home Loans to discuss interest rates, homestead exemptions, and pre-approvals. Looking to buy in Vero Beach? Get a Full Home Search Looking to sell in Vero Beach? Get a Free Home Price EvaluationToday I’m here with Shannon Pohl from Caliber Home Loans. Shannon has been a lender in Vero Beach for 15 years, and she has some advice to share with all of you buyers out there today.First of all, let’s talk about interest rates. Rates are still phenomenal right now and continue to hover in the 4% range. This July, we had the lowest interest rates ever. The T-Bill in July was down to 1.37, and now it’s at 2.3, which might not mean much to the average consumer. Rates back in July were at 3.75%, and now they are in the 4% range.Even factoring in these historically low interest rates, the 45-year average for interest rates was 8.25%, which means today's rates are still incredible!That said, experts expect that interest rates will continue to rise. As interest rates go up, purchasing power goes down. For instance, you may be able to afford a $400,000 house right now with a 4% interest rate. If rates go up to 4.5%, you would only be able to afford a $350,000 house.“Interest rates are still phenomenally low. ”If you want to qualify for a homestead exemption, you still have time to close before the end of the year. When you get the homestead exemption, the value of your primary residence cannot increase by more than 3% each year. Now you have a great chance to fix in a low interest rate and cap your taxes.Shannon and Caliber Home Loans can also help you get pre-approved. Shannon cannot stress the importance of using a local lender enough. For instance, when you get pre-approved at Caliber Home Loans, you will be thoroughly vetted by an underwriter. That makes your pre-approved offer as good as cash pending the appraisal, which we can get to you within 48 hours. That gives you a lot of buying power, especially in a market like this with a lot of cash buyers.If you just get pre-qualified, keep in mind that even the best client can run into disputes with their credit down the road. A pre-approval is the best way to go.If you have any questions for Shannon, you can call her on her cell at 772-360-6030. You can also call Caliber Home Loans at 772-226-6300 or visit their website. As always, if you have any real estate questions for me, just give me a call or send me an email. We would be happy to help you!

Episode #44 of our Community Broadband [no-glossary]Bits[/no-glossary] podcast expands on our story exploring a major victory over bad AT&T-driven legislation in Kentucky. We welcome Mimi Pickering of Appalshop and Tom FitzGerald of the Kentucky Resources Council. We discuss why the AT&T-authored bill to gut consumer protections was bad for Kentucky and how a terrific coalition … Continue reading "Kentucky Coalition Takes Down AT&T Bill to Remove Consumer Phone Protections – Community Broadband Bits #44" ★ Support this podcast ★

Down From the Mountain MeadowsVue Wave 24: Elliott BroodElliott Brood performing live at Megatunes on Jun 25, 2008.Setlist:1) "T-Bill"2) "Fingers and Tongues"3) "Garden River"4) "The Valley Town"5) "The Bridge"6) "Edge of Town"7) "Oh, Alberta"8) "Acer Negundo"9) "Riding in Time"