#1417 Phil Rosen & Anthony Pompliano | ALERT: US ECONOMY HELD HOSTAGE

Phil Rosen, the Co-Founder of Opening Bell Daily, and and Anthony Pompliano, Author of ‘How To Live An Extraordinary Life’ and CEO of Professional Capital Management, discuss interest rates, port strike, reactions to the VP debate, bitcoin, asset performances, and future outlook. ======================= Buy book: https://www.amazon.com/Live-Extraordinary-Life-Anthony-Pompliano/dp/0857199927/ ======================= CrossFi is the Apple Pay for Crypto. For the first time in history, anyone with a web 3 wallet like Metamask can spend crypto through a physical or virtual visa cards anywhere in the world where Visa is accepted. Be one of the first to get your hands on a CrossFi card and a prize pool of $3 Million Dollars by joining and participating in their testnet today: ⁠⁠https://xfi.foundation/users⁠⁠ ======================= View 10k+ open startup jobs: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. What's up guys? Bang, bang. I've got Phil Rosen today. He is the co-founder and editor in chief of Opening Bell Daily. In this conversation, we get into all of the current events. We talk about interest rates. We talk about the dock worker strike, and you're definitely going to want to hear what I got to say about that one.

• 0:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Then we also talk about what's going on in the VP debate. What were our reactions? What did we like? What did we not like? Did we change our mind about the candidates? Who do we think might be president? And why may the VPs actually be more important? On top of that, we then talk about Bitcoin, some of your guys' favorite asset. And we see, why is Bitcoin going up or down compared to gold? What about volatility? How should we think about correlations? And does anything that has happened in the last week or so change my mind about Bitcoin, your mind about Bitcoin, or any other assets? This conversation is wide ranging. We do our best to try to inform you with all of the little ideas in our brains. And so I would love for you to do two things. I'd love for you to share this episode with friends, family, ex-boyfriends or girlfriends. And also, I would love for you to leave some comments.

• 1:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Tweet at us or leave comments on YouTube and let us know what you liked, what you didn't like, what you agreed with, and what you didn't. Thank you so much. And here's my latest episode with Phil Rosen.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 2:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Today's episode is brought to you by CrossFi. CrossFi is the Apple Pay for crypto. For the first time in history, anyone with a Web3 wallet like MetaMask can spend crypto through a physical or virtual Visa card anywhere in the world where Visa is accepted. No more exchanges or middlemen. Just link your wallet, get your card, and start spending today. CrossFi card transactions have already been successfully processed in New York, Los Angeles, London, Dubai, China, Japan, and over 20 other countries. Be one of the first to get your hands on a CrossFi card and a prize pool of up to $3 million by joining and participating in their testnet today. You can go to xfi.foundation users. Again, that's xfi.foundation users. Go check it out today.

• 2:48Speaker 02

  Okay, Pomp, I want to talk to you about this dock worker's strike. This is, to me, this is the biggest economic story right now because it impacts inflation and the job market and GDP. It's going to impact our holiday shopping. Right now, there are thousands of longshoremen on strike on the East Coast and Gulf Coast, and it's closed down 36 ports. And JP Morgan thinks it'll cost the economy roughly $4 billion a day. The workers, some of whom are making 250K a year, they want two main things. The first is a 77% pay raise over the next six years and a ban on automation. What do you make of the first point, the pay raise here?

• 3:30Anthony Pompliano?

  I was reading Opening Bell Daily, and I saw that the, some of the workers make more than doctors in New York, I believe is the stat. And so that's crazy. That's insane, right? If you want the definition of bureaucracy and the negative dark side of unions, that's pretty much the prime example. The dock workers are making more than our doctors. How is that possible? In terms of what is actually the productivity of it? What it tells you is that it's not a free market. There's no real competition. What they have essentially done is they have manipulated the market to protect themselves from competition. If there's no competition, that means there is bad service.

• 4:15Anthony Pompliano?

  If there's bad service, it is bad for America. And so instead, if they were to say, let's have a free market competition. Who can do this job? The best and the most cost effective? Most of those people probably wouldn't have their job. Because somebody's going to offer the service for less than $250,000 per person. And so, again, that doesn't mean that these people are wrong. It doesn't mean that these people are bad people. It doesn't mean that they're even doing a bad job necessarily. What it does mean though, is that the union has manipulated the market, has pushed out any free market kind of influences. And it has essentially used negotiating tactics over free market capitalism. And so people may say, well, they're not getting paid enough.

• 5:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Or they're not doing this, or they're not doing that. Well, let me tell you what they're really scared of, which is your second point. They're scared of technology. Because guess what? What we are learning is that people that are nerds, that sit behind a computer, can write an algorithm to do that job. And that really, really rubs a dock worker wrong. Because they say, what do you mean you're going to get a robot to do my job? I've seen the robots. They can go, they can pick up boxes, they can put them down, they can move, they can walk, they can do all this stuff. This is the rudimentary, you know, kind of like the worst that this technology is ever going to be is right now. It's only going to get better. And so if today, I can already see,

• 5:43Anthony Pompliano?

  well, the dock worker may be faster, a little bit more, you know, kind of flexible, right? They, they, they might be able to kind of do things based on experience. But they gotta go home. They gotta go to sleep. So if that robot works 24 hours a day versus the dock worker who works eight or 10 hours a day, who actually moves more things? Who actually is more productive? Even though the robot is slower in a five-minute span, the robot may be getting close. I'm not claiming that it is actually more productive yet. But the fact that it's even remotely close tells you five years from now, the robot's probably gonna be superior. And so I wrote this morning and I said, listen, people fighting technology is not a new phenomenon. I get it. I understand where the ILA is coming from.

• 6:27Anthony Pompliano?

  If I am in charge of protecting the workers, I'm yelling and screaming about no technology. I'm yelling and screaming, pay us more money. I'm yelling and screaming about healthcare benefits. I'm yelling and screaming about safety and all these things. It ain't gonna stop history. Because the candle makers fought electricity. The horse owners, they fought cars. The newspapers fought the internet. You just go down the line. It is disruption. It is technological progress. And ultimately, what it is, it is competition. And if there's one thing in this country that we have realized is that there are certain parts of the economy where people are deathly afraid of competition. And if you are afraid of competition, you have only one option: to complain.

• 7:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Because I always say, compete, don't complain. But what we are watching is if I'm scared of competition, there's only one other option: yell and scream and try to negotiate and do all this stuff. So if you are in their position, they are being rational actors. They realize they can't compete with technology. They realize that this is probably the last big negotiation that they're gonna have before the robots take their jobs. So grab the bag, right? Get paid as much as you possibly can. Like, I understand why they're doing it. They're still wrong. It's still insane. It's still stupid. And so I think that there is executive power where the President of the United States can say, get back to work. You are now threatening the US economy.

• 7:56Anthony Pompliano?

  This is actually a national security issue, and it is an economic security issue. And so what happens in professional sports, there's been walkouts. Players have said, hey, we're not gonna play. You ever watch the movie The Replacements?

• 8:09Anthony Pompliano?

  We're not trying to teach people to play football here, right? There are crane operators, they're moving stuff, like all this stuff. There is some skill to it. But five years, definitely 10 years from now, there's going to be technology to do this stuff. And so what ends up occurring is we're actually getting a peek into the future. Humans are going to be replaced by technology, which means that human can do two things. Grab the bag while you still can, and then you better pivot and you better get retrained in some other skill, or you're not going to have a lot of options. And so I think that it is this like very simple idea, you know, on one hand, which is $4 billion a day.

• 8:52Anthony Pompliano?

  I think it's annualized 0.3% of GDP every week that they're shut down. You know, kind of that whole argument. But then there's this very complex thing of like, it's humans versus machines. And if you want to outlaw the machines, let me tell you. All you're telling me is that the machines are going to win. Because the machines, they ain't scared of you. The machines aren't, you know, lobbying, where there are no humans in the field, right? The machines are machines, they're just going to go compete. And so I do think that there's a very serious conversation in this country around, are these people attacking America? Is this an attack on America? We don't think of it that way. But think about what is actually occurring.

• 9:33Anthony Pompliano?

  You have a strike that is being positioned as workers leaving the job because they want higher pay. That's actually pretty American. That's been happening for a long time in this country. But if you watch the video of the union chief, who basically thinks he's a gangster, saying he's going to cripple the American economy. I've literally seen videos of terrorists saying that before. And so when you look at that, you say, listen, they're not the same, obviously. But if you end up trying to negotiate from a position that is not good faith, if you negotiate from a position that says, I am trying to hurt you unless I get what I want.

• 10:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Chapter in the book, can't be rational with an irrational person. And so, right now, basically, you have a few thousand Americans who are willing to potentially cripple the US economy, so that they don't have to compete with technology. I don't see a single headline in the mainstream media positioning it that way. Because I could rewrite every headline and I could say, "America attacked from within." Nobody's writing that story, because it's not something that is actually conducive to what the news organizations want, or is a popular talking point. But that's what's happening. There's an economic war being waged, workers versus the economy.

• 11:00Anthony Pompliano?

  And the workers are basically taking the most extreme version of their leverage. And they're saying, "We are going to cripple you." I'm not making it up, he literally said, "We're gonna cripple you." Okay, well, what should the response be from the US that would be adequate? If somebody says, let's say that a country threatens you, and they say, "We're gonna cripple you, we're gonna kill you, we're gonna destroy you." In violent conflict, you punch back, right? Strength brings safety. Right now, if we have somebody saying, "I'm gonna cripple you," and everyone just sits

• 11:43Anthony Pompliano?

  back and says, "Okay, well, let's see how long this could go. Let's do our little, you know, spreadsheets and see, well, there's $4 billion today, another $4 billion tomorrow, well, there's 0.3% of GDP." Instead, you have this weird thing of, if the maritime association was to punch back, how many journalists would be out there saying, "They're trying to cross the Union, they're trying to hurt the workers, they're trying to whatever." But nobody talks about it that way. And so, I think that it's a really weird dynamic, where everyone is all, it's almost like this is like a game, but no one takes it seriously.

• 12:24Anthony Pompliano?

  There is literally going to be a line from the decision to go on strike, to higher goods, to economic pain for American families. Who is it? How many? How bad is the pain? All that stuff? Nobody knows. But what happens if medicine skyrockets and someone can't afford it? And they die? Is anyone gonna write a story that says that the longshoreman killed ex-person?

• 12:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Nobody thinks of that. I'm not even saying it's going to happen. But what I'm saying is it's possible. If this goes on for a month, two months, and let's say that medicine goes up triple in price, because there literally becomes a scarcity of it. And we can't get it around in a different port. What happens? And so what I thought was really interesting was J.D. Vance at the debate recently, he talked about, well, all the experts said, put your jobs elsewhere. But what we should be doing is we should be reshoring. We should be manufacturing in the U.S., all this stuff. By investing in American manufacturing, by investing in the U.S. economy, we lessen our dependency on the ports.

• 13:42Anthony Pompliano?

  And so, in a weird way, by pursuing lowest cost production, we handed over power and leverage to the dock workers, who literally now have the U.S. economy in their hand. And they're saying, if you don't give me what I want, I'm gonna crush you.

• 14:00Anthony Pompliano?

  You can trace it all the way back to, well, if we never shipped the jobs off to China or wherever else, and we made all these goods here in America, we wouldn't be in that situation. But we also might not have low-cost goods. Right? And so it's a very complex thing. But I just think that people always evaluate these situations, and they want to talk about the like, the numbers. But also, is it patriotic to go on strike knowing that you're gonna cripple the U.S. economy?

• 14:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Again, strikes are as American as they come. But also, it's one thing to hurt your company. It's another thing when you're explicitly saying as a threat, we are going to cripple the US economy. That, to me, you step over a line. And I think that there's a lot of people, and that's why you see the reaction you're seeing, where people are like, hey, guys, like, enough. What do you think?

• 14:52Speaker 02

  Well, something that stood out to me was a lot of the people on strike on these docs, they make triple what the typical American makes, which is, you know, I think that speaks volumes, and they're willing to put those everyday Americans at risk, whether it's higher goods, or they don't get their holiday shopping done, whatever it is. There's such a misalignment of priorities here, and it's certainly not something the president's going to do about it. So one source of mine, he told me yesterday, one reason that the strike is happening now is because the Biden administration has come out many times saying they're the most pro-union administration ever.

• 15:34Speaker 02

  So the strikers know that Biden's not going to step in, and he's not going to prevent any economic damage, because that's his, he's essentially built a reputation on this. So now is their time when there's essentially no consequences for any of their actions. And something I also found was just unbelievable. So you have people making 250K a year, 150K a year, and they rejected an offer from the shipping companies for a 50% raise, which I, you know, I'll take a 50% raise any day. I wouldn't argue with anyone.

• 16:09Anthony Pompliano?

  So that means that some of the people turned down $375,000.

• 16:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:18Anthony Pompliano?

  How fortunate are we as a country? Think about how crazy it is. We have dock workers who are able to have the luxury of turning down $375,000 a year.

• 16:30Anthony Pompliano?

  We're the greatest country in the world. The luxuries that we have is almost unfathomable. If you go back 120 years and you look at photos in New York, in Boston, in various port cities, people were hungry. Think about the Great Depression and they were standing there. Please pick me to give work to today. Let me have the opportunity to go earn a living for my family. Right? There's movies made about this. To now, the dock workers are 375,000, we're good. Now, again, I don't actually know in this particular case, how much input does the individual union member have?

• 17:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Or is it just the one guy who's like, I ain't signing the deal. You elected me, everyone shut up, I'm not signing the deal. Because the other thing that usually gets overlooked here, I had no clue who that guy was. I'm not gonna use his name, I ain't gonna make him famous. But how much of this is egotistical? Everyone knows who he is now. They seen his face. The longer he holds out, the more famous he becomes. The more he can hang his hat on his reputation, his accomplishment. I held out for the three week, you know, strike back in 2024, and I got my men paid. That's what, that's part of what's going on here is the bigger the bag that he secures, it's not actually about getting the men paid.

• 17:57Anthony Pompliano?

  It's about being the guy who got the bag. And so you can't get rid of that. That's, that's human history, right? People, there's egos, there's reputations, there's emotions, there's fear, greed, all that stuff. But come on, that's gotta be playing into this a little bit.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  Well, I think this guy, I have not independently verified this, but I have seen multiple sources saying he makes 900K a year, which, you know, as you would think as a blue collar worker making 900K, that, you know, that's beyond what your, at least your competitors are making or the open market would grant you.

• 18:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Elon says he's got more yachts than Elon.

• 18:34Speaker 02

  That's, yeah. I have no words for that.

• 18:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Again, what's your definition of a yacht versus a boat? What, you know, whatever, that almost doesn't matter. It's like, look, the union chief probably gets paid more than everybody.

• 18:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And again, you could argue that he's the leader, he's the one organizing, he's the one who's got the highest leverage, no different than the CEO of an organization. But I saw a lot of people who were also saying, how come the uh, union dock workers only get paid X and the CEOs of the shipping companies? Well, like, because the shipping company CEO creates more value. That's why he gets paid more. Whether you agree with what he gets paid or not, like, that is why he gets paid more. The union chief gets paid more because he creates more value.

• 19:20Anthony Pompliano?

  But $900,000 is a lot of money.

• 19:21Speaker 02

  It's a lot of money.

• 19:22Anthony Pompliano?

  And so, again, it's not a thing to say, oh, he shouldn't get paid $900,000. It's not a thing to say that the dock worker isn't worth 250 grand. I actually come from the position of like, I don't know what they should get paid. I don't have all the information. Should they get a 20% raise, 50%, 75%, 100%? Whatever. Somebody else will figure out the, what they should get paid. I don't think that is actually the thing that I'm like most concerned with. The thing I'm most concerned with is when you start to try to ban technology, because what you are essentially doing is you are saying, no matter how good the technology is, we should be able to keep a job. And what you start to do is you start to try to make a moral argument over an economic argument. And go through history, that never ends well.

• 20:03Speaker 02

  I think a lot of the support for the union is that moral versus economic argument right now, because I've seen plenty of articles in the last two days that are so overtly pro um, the dock worker's strike, which I think is fine, but I think calling it for what it is, which is, you know, it's like philosophically, you'll be pro-union no matter what, even if the economics don't work. And I don't think that's very defensible. Um, and something else here that I haven't um, forecasted too much into or researched, if there are job market implications of this strike, if this drags on and it results in job losses among the dock workers or in other industries that are affected,

• 20:48Speaker 02

  I wonder if that will impact how the Federal Reserve changes interest rates in the coming few months? Because then that really impacts, you know, the butterfly effect across the whole economy. We, we can't really anticipate.

• 21:03Anthony Pompliano?

  This is a complex situation. And so if goods are rising, unemployment is rising, do you cut or not? Do you create an inflationary pressure or not? Is the supply chain disruption, which we saw in 2020, inflationary or not? Right? You start to look at this stuff and you say, wait a minute, there's like second order effect, third order effect, fourth order effect. I do not envy Jerome Powell right now. I actually don't think he probably cares that much yet. This goes two weeks. Every single person on Wall Street is going to care. Right now, it's kind of like, oh, there's a strike, they're going to figure it out, you know, whatever. I don't think that one week is enough pain.

• 21:48Anthony Pompliano?

  You get into week two. Now you're talking about if you get to the end of week two, half of a percent in GDP is lost, annualized? You won't get people paying attention. And so I do wonder, if they already offered a 50% raise, do they just say, screw it? Like, does the union know? This is such a break glass in case of emergency moment. They can ask for anything they want. Right? And they're going to get it. And my guess is that's their thought process, whether it's true or not. That's why they're doing it. Is because they know this is like the trump card in their back pocket.

• 22:32Anthony Pompliano?

  But instead, what happens if the local media or the national media? Go take every single person in the union. Publish their photo. These are the men and women who are holding the American economy hostage. Your local goods are going to go up in price because these people won't go to work for a quarter of a million dollars.

• 22:58Anthony Pompliano?

  You start playing that game, you meet fire with fire, right? Let's see who backs down first, if there's actually pushback. But right now, all of the quote-unquote "pushback" is happening in a private room negotiation. But at some point, are we gonna hold the people accountable who are doing this? Because, again, you can want to have a better job. Here's the crazy part. They probably actually would be better off long-term if they allowed automation, because it'll create more jobs. They probably actually will get paid more money over time, because they're trying to negotiate like a preset 70% raise or whatever, right?

• 23:40Anthony Pompliano?

  But if you look at Blackstone, I think in 2020 gave everyone an 8% raise because of inflation. So like, the market force may actually help them get paid more money. What was the average dock worker getting paid 10 years ago? Probably not 250 grand, right? And so, you look at this stuff and you say, you think that you're being smart, but you may be actually being short-sighted. And so, it's just this very weird situation. The people that I actually feel for the most are the people who are caught in the middle. So not the American people and not the like hardcore dock worker. There are some people who, they want to go to work. And they're like, "Look, I joined the union because that's what everyone does," right? All this stuff, whatever.

• 24:24Anthony Pompliano?

  And they're saying to themselves, "You know what? I'd like to get paid more money, but I'm cool getting paid 250 grand doing my job every day. I don't want to be involved in all this. I want to support my family." And what I have found in situations across these kind of like macroeconomic, you know, kind of complexities, most people, that's where they fall. They're not gonna complain if you give them more money, right? They're not gonna give it back. But, they're saying to themselves, "Listen, I got this job because I want to be able to provide for my family. I got kids, I got a husband or a wife. I want to be able to just go to work, do my thing, have enough money to be able to live, and that's it." Where you start to get bad ideas is when you bring together a lot of people and everyone

• 25:06Anthony Pompliano?

  keeps ratcheting up, we should ask for this, we should ask for this, no man, ask for this. And then the next thing is like, we want a 77% raise.

• 25:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? It's like the number probably didn't start out at 77. It probably started out somewhere lower and then it just became like, nah, they'll give us more. They'll give it. And like, somebody just was like, fine, this is the number.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  Well, I have a couple stats here that I pulled from a 2023 survey. 55% of dock workers earn more than 150K and almost one in five earn more than 250K. So that's, that's the, you know, a snapshot at least. And that was a year ago.

• 25:45Anthony Pompliano?

  I wonder what the average starting salary of someone leaving Harvard or MIT is. My, my guess is it sounds pretty close to 50% of the dock workers.

• 25:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I, I had friends that went to MIT and they were making 60 or 70K right out of university. So before we get into any more of this dock worker stuff, I want to ask you about the VP debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz last night. I think it's going to be their only debate and it definitely had less attention than the Trump Harris debate.

• 26:26Speaker 02

  But what did you make of, you know, what was your read on it?

• 26:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, before I answer about JD Vance, I just looked up what the average salary is. The Princeton graduates earn on average of $90,000 by the age of 34. Harvard grads earn on average $81,000. Bottom of the Ivy League pile is Brown, where the average income for graduates is just $67,000. This is from August of 2024.

• 27:00Speaker 02

  So to be fair, I would argue actually quite strongly that most blue collar workers are more useful than Ivy League grads.

• 27:07Anthony Pompliano?

  That's probably true.

• 27:08Speaker 02

  I believe that. So I don't, I don't doubt the numbers, but I think that that might be what the market is acknowledging too.

• 27:15Anthony Pompliano?

  But how crazy is it that how many people are telling their kids, go to Harvard? And literally, if you go and you're a dock worker down the street in a port town, you actually may make more money than the Harvard grad, right? And so it tells you that how much of Harvard is about making money versus status.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? I would argue the dock worker may have a better life.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  Probably.

• 27:42Anthony Pompliano?

  You know, one of the things that people I don't think quite understand is, um, one day, Plin and I were driving in the car and I was sitting at a red light and I remember looking out the window and there was a guy and he was, uh, weed eating on the side. And she was like, why, like, I was just staring at him and she, and she said to me, she was, why are you staring at him? And I just looked at her and I said, you know, I have some friends, not me, but I have some friends who they make a lot of money.

• 28:12Anthony Pompliano?

  They don't see their families. They're high stressed all the time. They're probably going to die early, right? They're always frustrated, upset, angry, you know, all this stuff. And they actually don't even like what they do.

• 28:25Anthony Pompliano?

  I remember looking at this guy, I have no clue who he was. I didn't talk to him. I didn't know what his story or anything. And I was just looking and I just said to myself, I wonder if that guy thinks he's got a better life than my friends who everyone else thinks, you know, super successful, whatever. Depends on what you're optimizing for, depends on how you evaluate it, whatever. But I just remember in that moment saying to myself, sometimes the thing that people think they want is actually not the thing that is going to make them happy, feel successful, whatever. And so how many people, if given the opportunity, would take a 10% pay cut if they could spend 50% more time with their kids? Not everyone, but there's a lot of people who would do that. Right? And so you look at this stuff and you start to say, you know,

• 29:11Anthony Pompliano?

  There are a lot of people who work a lot of jobs in America that others may look at and be like, I would never want to do that. Don't be so fast, right? There, there are certain things that they may have that you don't. And how many people before this whole thing happened knew that the average dock worker, more than 50% of them, over 150 grand? Not that many, right? And so it's just kind of crazy how this all happens. Now JD Vance,

• 29:41Anthony Pompliano?

  I pride myself on being an independent JD Vance stellar performance, stellar performance. I thought that it was probably one of

• 29:51Anthony Pompliano?

  the best debate performances I've seen in politics in years. Clear, concise, gracious. He was very complimentary of his opponent, but he was very strong on his thoughts. And I saw somebody said, you know, what JD Vance did was he showed people that you can be pro Donald Trump policies without the bite of Donald Trump's rhetoric. That was a really good way to look at it. On top of that, if you go and you look at the other side, I thought Tim Walz was not very good in terms of vernacular, delivery, kind of statesmanship, etc.

• 30:32Anthony Pompliano?

  But I thought he was very strong on hitting his talking points. I thought he was very strong in saying what he wanted to communicate. You may disagree what the policies are, but walking out of there, I got a sense. I know what he believes, understand what his policies are. I know what he believes, understand what his policies are. That to me makes it one of the most successful debates. Overall kind of analysis because when we left the last presidential debate, I don't think anyone knew anything. All we knew was one guy said they're eating the cats and the dogs, right? And the other woman lived in a middle-class family, right? And, and they just like, and it was just like them talking past each other non-stop.

• 31:16Anthony Pompliano?

  This debate, I think people kind of had a little bit of nostalgia. Like, oh man, this is how, this is like what it used to be.

• 31:23Speaker 02

  It was like Obama Romney debates.

• 31:25Anthony Pompliano?

  I saw a lot of people talking about, why don't we get a Vance Walz ticket? Right? Now again, I don't think that would ever happen, but to the degree of like, let's bring back.

• 31:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Patient, gracious, complimentary conversation. And you can vehemently disagree, but you can say it nicely. And I think one of the things that I've seen this play out is in the Bitcoin world. People want to savage, you know, the critics. They want to go, I'm just as guilty as anybody else. It's pretty cool and fun to dunk on someone on the internet. I get it. But as I've gotten a little bit older, what I realized is that is the immature easy path. It's actually harder to disagree with someone, say it nicely, with a smile, to be a statesman. That's way harder than to just be like, shut up, you're dumb.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  Well, I think both of them were actually quite polite and gracious last night. They almost every other point, one or the other would say, we actually agree on a lot of this, but, and then blah, blah, blah. But I thought both of them were quite, yeah, old fashioned, honestly. And certainly you're not going to see that with Trump and Harris if they debate again or if they ever interact. And that was a, it was quite refreshing. I, I thought I would watch a bit of it and then it would get stale and then I would move on. But I actually stayed the whole time and I was like, wow, this is quite engaging. And I'm actually learning something too, from both candidates.

• 32:56Anthony Pompliano?

  I thought JD also did a great job introducing himself, right? So him saying, hey, American people, you probably don't know who I am. And you, and you don't know who he is either. Like, let me introduce myself. I thought that was really good moment. And then the other thing that I think Kamala Harris did well in the first debate, if you said to me, hey, what was her strongest moment? It was on the abortion stuff. I thought that Tim Walz very similar. I mean, he carbon copied the playbook, right? Tell a story of an individual, whatever. But I thought he was very strong there. Now it kind of negated when they were like, hey, were you into the Tiananmen Square or not? Right? Uh, whatever. And so, you know, I'm somebody who believes that every candidate's got at least one positive attribute

• 33:39Anthony Pompliano?

  and every candidate's got at least one flaw, right? And you're going to go in a ballot box, you're going to decide kind of which flaws can you put up with? And which attributes do you want? But I did feel like there was a civility that kind of got breathed back into American politics by these two guys. And what was interesting to me is they both have active track records to point to. So it's not a, I'm not a politician. But they both pride themselves on, I'm kind of new to politics. So they have political positions, but he was a teacher. He was a soldier, he was a venture capitalist, right? Like, like they have these backgrounds. And so I do think in a weird way, um, it was good for us to watch that.

• 34:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, but if you gave, you know, like you gotta declare a winner, you know, the bell rings. You gotta raise one person's hand. I think that, you know, JD wins all 12 rounds unanimously. Um, and a lot of it just is, uh, very eloquent.

• 34:39Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 34:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Very strong on the points. He's a lawyer, right? Uh, he's a good debater and, uh, man, looks good in a beard.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I, I think the, the visual contrast was, was quite stark. The, you know, JD just looked so much younger because he is so much younger. Uh, and he looked sharper, I, I thought. And he, he spoke faster and, you know, he had less, uh, pauses and ums in his, his speech. It was very, um, I, I think one thing I took away. It actually gave me more confidence in both presidential candidates because they have this maybe more stoic and, uh, level-headed partner at their side, whoever wins. Um, so that, you know, maybe one positive.

• 35:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And, and I also think, um, you know,

• 35:27Anthony Pompliano?

  they're both veterans, which I, which I think is interesting. Now, again, uh, one of their track records is coming to a question again. Um, if you kind of put aside all the nonsense on the internet, the guy still served for 25, 27, you know, whatever, some long period of time. Uh, JD obviously served in Iraq, you know, as a marine. Um, and I think that there is this, uh, really interesting dynamic of if you're gonna be the commander in chief, you probably want one of the two people in the Oval Office to have served. You don't need them both and you don't necessarily, it doesn't have to be the president, but you kind of want one of the two decision makers to have the, you know, on the ground experience to be able to describe, hey, you know, if we go to war somewhere, let me tell you about who you're sending. Let me tell you what it's like.

• 36:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Let me tell you, you know, whatever. Um, and so I think that's the kind of a, a piece that maybe kind of gets washed in the background as people don't realize like, hey, they actually both tickets have that. Um, and then the other part that I think is, uh, uh, was really good. And then probably why I think JD, you know, kind of unanimously wins is, There was times where on the reproductive rights stuff, he just said, actually, I think we got to do better. The past is the past, I can't go back and change that, but going forward, I think we got to be better. And here's how I think we got to be better. We got to do, you know, IDF and this and that, whatever. And I thought it was just such a, it's like a verbal judo move because nobody expects

• 36:54Anthony Pompliano?

  the candidate running, especially the first presidential debate, they're both beating their chests saying, I'm the best.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Right?

• 37:01Speaker 02

  It was very humble.

• 37:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, just to say, listen, you know, we're not perfect. We got some stuff wrong. And I think JD even at one point, I mean, I was actually a little blown away by just how eloquently he said it, but they asked him about, I think it was a specific thing around abortion. And he said, look, I had a certain view and the people of Ohio rejected my view. They voted overwhelmingly in support of a different view. So I changed my mind. I realized that the people want something else. And so that's what I'm going to do. I was just like, man, yes. Right? Like, like, like that is what we want, our politicians, right? And I'm sure that Tim Walz got certain things like that as well, that, you know, he's gone through whatever, but it's just like the way JD said it, it was like, forget for a second

• 37:40Anthony Pompliano?

  political size of the aisle, whatever, just, man, imagine if Trump and Harris were able to do the same thing. Imagine if Kamala Harris, rather than saying, the border is secure, said, you know what? I see the data. I might be slow to see the data, but I see the data. I'm going to go from my past policy to now I am going to 180 and I am going to be known as the president that sealed the border. I think a lot of people would just be like, well, at least we don't need to debate anymore whether like there was a problem. Right now, it seems like we're still debating like, is there 13,000 murderers coming across the border or not?

• 38:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Which is kind of a distraction from actually like, hey, what are we going to do about it?

• 38:28Speaker 02

  It's like gaslighting.

• 38:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I mean, it is the definition of gaslighting.

• 38:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, well, you wrote about this in your book. It's, you have to be humble and wise enough to change your mind and be willing to change your mind when presented with new information.

• 38:42Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that.

• 38:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Whoever is president next, we're going to get an entertainer in the first seat, and we're going to get a decision maker in the second seat. And so maybe the more important debate last night was actually, you know, what we watched in the VP debate.

• 39:04Speaker 02

  So Bitcoin saw a very sharp drop this week after news of Iran's attack on Israel, and it's down about 6% in the last five days, and that sort of run countered to the narrative that it's a safe haven trade, sort of like gold. And gold has actually been flat this week. It went up and then was flat, but it's doing better than Bitcoin in the most recent few days. Tell us what's going on here, because the digital gold is not really acting like the real gold.

• 39:32Anthony Pompliano?

  I think it's acting better than the real gold, which all the gold bugs will be like, what are you talking about? But Bitcoin is gold with wings. So when gold goes up, Bitcoin goes up more. When gold goes down, then Bitcoin goes down more. So earlier this week, Bitcoin went up, and then it dropped when there was kind of all the conflict. And so gold also went up, it just didn't go up as much as Bitcoin did. And then when they dropped, gold basically dropped back down to being flat for the week, and Bitcoin dropped to being down 6%. If you want a store of value that does not go down a lot, you have to be okay with a store of value that does not go up a lot in dollar terms, too. So if you look at the performance, let's say, of this year, Bitcoin and gold have actually

• 40:15Anthony Pompliano?

  traded directionally very similarly, but Bitcoin is destroying gold's performance in terms of year-to-date return. And so I want to store a value that, over the long run, goes up, but doesn't just go up at about the pace of inflation, I want to store a value that gains me purchasing power. And so it's not true anymore, but earlier this year, if you look back over five years, gold holders had actually lost purchasing power, because the rate of inflation, where we had been in a high inflation environment, had been higher than the rate of gain for gold. Now, gold, because of the recent run and the new all-time highs, has recaptured that, and it has now outlasted inflation. But the fact that it's even close, whereas Bitcoin is not close, tells you everything

• 41:00Anthony Pompliano?

  you need to know, which the digital gold is superior on a return basis than the physical gold.

• 41:07Speaker 02

  So does this mean that you do view Bitcoin as a safe haven trade? Can you clarify that?

• 41:14Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that it's not my opinion. It's objectively a safe haven trade because what we have seen is people convert fiat currency into Bitcoin and they hold the Bitcoin. That is, you look on chain, they're holding Bitcoin long term. If you look at what occurs when inflation was coming, Paul Tudor Jones, Stanley Druckenmaier, all of them, hey, this is an inflation hedge, I think it's gonna be the fastest horse. If you look at in times where there is conflict, what you have seen, let's say when former President Donald Trump was shot in the assassination attempt, gold dropped as soon as he was okay, it exploded higher. And so what you're seeing is you're seeing a highly sensitive asset to these macro developments, but it is still a safe haven asset.

• 41:58Anthony Pompliano?

  And so what people tend to look at is they will say, okay, Bitcoin is this non-correlated asset, it's asymmetric, and it does serve as a safe haven. But then in moments of crisis, people will look and they'll say, oh, look, it went down, it's not a safe haven. If you go back to the 2008, 2009 global financial crisis, gold went down for six months. For six months, gold's price fell. That doesn't mean it's not a safe haven, it means there was a liquidity crisis. Any asset that had a liquid market attached to it, you sold. And so gold went down, stocks went down, real estate went down, bonds went, everything went down. And so if you go to 2020, in March, when there was a liquidity crisis, all of a sudden, the Federal Reserve's gotta cut interest rates twice, they gotta print money to kind of solve that liquidity crisis.

• 42:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, in a liquidity crisis, everyone's selling everything. So gold went down, stocks went down, Bitcoin went down, everything, because people want dollars. And so correlations trend towards one in moments of crisis, but that doesn't mean that something is a safe haven or not a safe haven. What you have to look at is what are investors doing over the coming months? Because in a moment of fear, what people actually want is not a safe haven asset. What they want is they want as high liquidity in US dollars as possible. Then what they do is, okay, the crisis has transpired, what am I going to position myself to benefit moving forward? And that's where they start to allocate to safe haven assets. And when you do that analysis, Bitcoin has been a huge winner over the last 10 years.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  I think that makes sense. Can you explain a bit more also? If someone, if a critic of Bitcoin were to say, this is more correlated to risk assets in the stock market than to, you know, maybe dollar, but safer assets like gold. What would you say to that?

• 43:45Anthony Pompliano?

  It depends on what the time period is. So before 2020, if you looked at correlations, Bitcoin's correlation was about 0.15. It was very non-correlated compared to stocks or, you know, other assets. This correlation has crept up. You should expect it to creep up because what do you have? You have more and more pools of capital coming in and adopting the asset. And so how do you get a correlation? Everyone acts the same with the asset. And so if everyone on Wall Street owns Bitcoin and everyone buys or sells on the same inputs, then of course it's going to become correlated. But we're still not to the high degree of correlation that maybe some of the more traditional assets are. So it may not be as non-correlated as it used to be, but it is still less correlated than many traditional assets.

• 44:29Anthony Pompliano?

  And so 10 years from now, Bitcoin probably has a higher correlation than it does today because it's going to be adopted by more and more people. Same thing with like the financial return. Buying Bitcoin in 2015 was highly risky. The odds of it going to zero in people's minds was way higher than it is today. Because you took more risk and the perception of risk, you should get paid a higher return. So you, in 2015, you expect to get paid way more in the returns of Bitcoin than you would today. Why? It's less risky. So same thing with correlation is you should be rewarded with a higher non-correlation in 2015 than today because it's less risky, there's more adoption, and the asset is now starting to seep into portfolios where people are making decisions based on the same inputs.

• 45:13Anthony Pompliano?

  And so everyone starts to act the same way. What are they doing right now? Risk on, risk off. I'm buying tech stocks, I'm not buying tech stocks. I'm buying Bitcoin, I'm not buying Bitcoin. And so you're starting to see some of those correlations, but I still don't think it's at a concerning level that would make me want to either sell my Bitcoin or think that the thesis for adoption and investment has changed.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  Okay, so speaking of these correlations and we stressed on September Bitcoin and stocks had a winning September, which is quite rare historically.

• 45:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Narrative violation.

• 45:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that's what I want to ask you about. Why do you see this as a narrative violation? Is there anything that you're pointing to other than historically that doesn't happen?

• 45:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Just September, stocks go down. I think it's the worst performing month of the year historically for stocks, if I remember correctly. Bitcoin also has a pretty bad month. You know, people kind of come back from the summer break. They start tactically, you know, changing their portfolio, preparing for the end of the year. You get things like rate cuts, you get things like elections. And so September has just kind of been a dead month. Well, once everyone starts talking about it being a dead month and everyone expects it to be a down month, of course it rips up and it has a great, you know, month. Now, what's funny to me is if September is supposed to be a bad month, October is also known as Uptober, right? And so everyone is expecting the prices to go up. How funny would it be if stocks of Bitcoin trade down or trade up when

• 46:39Anthony Pompliano?

  they're supposed to trade down? And then when everyone thinks they're going to go up, they trade down. I'm not saying that's what's going to happen, but it goes back to this idea that everyone is so sure that they know what is going to happen based on historical data. You can use it as a guide, but it is not written in stone. And so you have to be able to evaluate the historical data with the current situation, easing monetary policy and upcoming election, geopolitical risk, all this stuff, and try to come up with what is the probability. Now, the one group that doesn't have to worry about is September up or down or October's up or down are long-term holders. And so in the stock market, if you're just dollar cost averaging into these indexes and you just hold the asset for a long time, you're going to be fine. Same thing with Bitcoin. And so I do think that there's this weird thing where everyone is

• 47:24Anthony Pompliano?

  doing like an intellectual, kind of like, you know, like circular conversation. Is it going to go up? Is it going to go down? Is it going to go up? Is it going to go down? Who cares? Like, in five years, it's going to be worth more or less. If you are trying to trade highly volatile assets, I don't know what Bitcoin's volatility is right now, but it's like An 80 vol asset at times. If you're trying to trade that, you are a masochist. Because the odds that you can be able to go long and short, an 80 vol asset at the right time, over and over and over again, you either are God, you have a crystal ball, or you're a liar. But those are the only three ways that you can actually come to the conclusion that you're going to be able to time tops and bottoms in an asset like that. And so the average person is much better off just dollar cost averaging and do a good asset

• 48:09Anthony Pompliano?

  and hold it for a long period of time.

• 48:11Speaker 02

  Pretty much every investor and portfolio manager I've been talking to, they've been disregarding the October or down September and they don't even want to talk about it with me. But you know, as a reporter, I'm going to ask these questions. But the, yeah, the long-term thinkers are not worried about this. They're not even looking at it. On that note, thank you for having me.

• 48:30Anthony Pompliano?

  I appreciate you coming. We'll do it again. What's up, guys? I hope you're enjoying this episode, but I got a quick message for you. I just released my very first book. It's called How to Live an Extraordinary Life. In this book, there are 65 life lessons that I've picked up over the years. These lessons will teach you about money, investing, relationships, work, health, happiness, and much more. In this book, I wrote letters to each one of my children and I tried to share those life lessons with them. If you pick up this book, there's three things that I can promise you. The first is that it is very concise. The audio book is only three hours. You can listen to it on a long drive or on a rainy afternoon. The second thing is that you're going to learn something. It's worth the price of admission just for the lessons themselves.

• 49:12Anthony Pompliano?

  And then the third thing is it will make you think more deeply about your life and how you try to live it. So go pick up How to Live an Extraordinary Life today. It's a quick read. It's very impactful. It's very concise and it would mean the world to me for the support. Go check it out today on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever you buy your books. Hardcover, audiobook, it all works. Thank you so much for the support and I'd love to hear what you think about the new book.