#1013 Caleb Franzen On What Needs To Happen For Inflation To Fall

Caleb Franzen is a Senior Market Analyst at Cubic Analytics. In this conversation, we talk about the Fed and how much they're in control, what it's going to take to lower inflation, Bitcoin's crash, Bitcoin's correlation to various stocks and commodities, and how long a recession may last. ======================= LMAX Digital - the market-leading solution for institutional crypto trading & custodial services - offers clients a regulated, transparent and secure trading environment, together with the deepest pool of crypto liquidity. LMAX Digital is also a primary price discovery venue, streaming real-time market data to the industry’s leading analytics platforms. LMAX Digital - secure, liquid, trusted. Learn more at LMAXdigital.com/pomp ======================= The Pod Pro Cover by Eight Sleep is the most advanced solution on the market for thermoregulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. Go to https://www.eightsleep.com/Pomp to check out the Pod Pro Cover and save $150 at checkout. Eight Sleep currently ships within the USA, Canada, and the UK. ======================= DeFi Technologies represents what’s next in the digital economy -- providing simplified, trusted access to crypto, decentralized finance and Web 3.0 investment opportunities. Institutions and investors can gain diversified, secure, compliant, and easily tradable access to a diversified set of industry-leading equity products and protocols, through a single stock purchase on a regulated exchange. Currently listed on U. S. (OTC: DEFTF) and Canadian (NEO:DEFI) exchanges. For more information or to subscribe to receive company updates and financial information, visit our website at http://defi.tech =======================

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. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Caleb Franzen is a Senior Market Analyst at Cubic Analytics. In this conversation, we talk about the macro environment, we talk about the lending market, and we talk about Bitcoin, its correlation to various assets. I really enjoyed this conversation with Caleb, and I hope you guys enjoy it as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I first want to talk about our sponsors. First up is LMAX Digital, the number one institutional crypto exchange. They offer clients the deepest pool of crypto liquidity on the planet, underscored by 100% uptime track record through volatility spikes. They leverage LMAX Group's liquidity relationships

• 0:44Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:25Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Decentralized finance and web three investment opportunities. Institutions and investors can gain diversified, secure, compliant and easily tradable access to a diversified set of industry leading equity products and protocols through a single stock purchase on a regulated exchange. DeFi Technologies is currently listed on the US exchange at DEF TF Stock ticker and the Canadian Neo exchange at DEFI. For more information or to subscribe to receive company updates and financial information, visit their website at defi.tech. I'm really excited about what these guys are doing. I've become an advisor to the business and I highly suggest you go check them out. Go to their website at defi.tech today.

• 2:52Speaker 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.

• 3:15Anthony Pompliano?

  We've got Caleb. Caleb, how you doing?

• 3:18Speaker 02

  Pomp, I'm doing great, man. Great to be here.

• 3:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome, man. I'm super excited to talk to you. The first thing I'd like to talk about is when you think about the current environment, obviously the Federal Reserve's been increasing interest rates and they've been conducting quantitative tightening or at least saying that they're going to do it. How do you think about asset prices across the spectrum in relation to that? Should we just see correlations go towards one and all asset prices sell off? Or should we expect to have some sort of decoupling in this type of environment?

• 3:48Speaker 02

  That's such a great question. I think it's on everyone's mind right now is kind of the macro framework and monetary policy kind of dominates the market narrative right now. And from my perspective, one of the things that you learn in kind of like entry level finance and economics courses is that yields and asset prices have an inverse correlation, all else being equal. And so as we're in an interest rate environment where the Fed is tightening monetary policy and yields on treasuries are are moving higher, right? In that environment, we've seen asset prices across the board, whether we're looking at Stocks or Bitcoin and crypto or even treasuries in the bond market, everything is selling off in this environment. And so from my perspective, so long as we remain in this environment, asset prices are going to have headwinds

• 4:34Speaker 02

  to rise and benefit in this environment, right? So until we really see a formal shift in basically the yield environment, am I expecting to see a bull market?

• 4:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, when you start to think about kind of the transition from let's call the bear market we're in now, pretty much across asset classes into a bull market. Is it just when does the Fed let their foot off the gas pedal? Or is there other things that you would be looking for?

• 5:00Speaker 02

  I think there's some other things, right? Like the Fed is clearly behind the curve in this environment. And so if we start to see inflation data formally roll over and kind of sustain that rollover, then I think that could be a a general foreshadowing of a reversal in the monetary policy environment. But if we look generally speaking at stock market and crypto relative to monetary policy, we can kind of get some clues as to how these assets have behaved in the past relative to monetary policy. And so if we look at when Bitcoin and the stock market bottomed in 2018, it was in December of 2018 when the Fed formally paused their rate hikes.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  And so we had a formal shift in the monetary policy outlook and environment. When did asset prices bottom in 2020, including crypto, right? Is the Fed came out and formally said, we are here to provide infinite support to the monetary and financial system. And asset prices ripped higher. When did stocks and Bitcoin and crypto broadly peak? In November of 2021, when the Fed announced that they were tapering. So it's a, it's a super simple and kind of a crude metric for where asset prices are going to go going forward, but it's been super accurate in this kind of like monetary wonderland that we're in, right?

• 6:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. When we start to look at certain parts of the market, there's aspects that I know you've been paying attention to that we just haven't talked about that much on this show. So I'd love to kind of go through this. The first is this idea of loans and leases. And you've identified that it's one expanding at a rapid pace. But also there's this relationship with inflation. So maybe explain a little bit about this loans and leases and how people should think about this as part of the financial system.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Sure. So I spent two years working on the commercial banking side as a portfolio analyst. So I got really familiar with looking at this kind of data overall. And I've been out of that field now for almost two years. So nothing I'm about to say is indicative of like my former employer or anything like that. Right. But essentially, when I look at loans and leases, I think it's very important because as we think about the inflationary dynamics, obviously, the Fed came out and they printed all of this money and operated QE through like crazy, right, for 24 months plus. And obviously, the monetary base in M2 expanded during that period. But until we see that money really come into the actual real economy and leave the financial and banking system,

• 7:31Speaker 02

  I think that's going to bring more inflationary pressures in. So in the upper bound of this chart, we're looking at the nominal value of total loans and leases that have been issued by commercial banks in the United States. And it just hit an all time high in early June at roughly $11.3 trillion. In the lower bound of this chart, what I've done is I've actually denominated loans and leases and I've divided it by M2 money supply. So this gives us somewhat of an indication of credit creation relative to the monetary base. And if we look over time, basically since 2000, we get these distinct kind of rolling overs at the tops and curling back up during an uptrend. And it appears as though for the past six to seven months,

• 8:14Speaker 02

  loans and leases relative to the monetary base are starting to increase again. And I think that's one of the main reasons why we continue to see inflationary pressures in 2022.

• 8:25Anthony Pompliano?

  So when you see this, basically, people are just borrowing what was cheap capital, now becoming more expensive. And they're using other people's money essentially to go ahead and buy assets, to consume, do whatever they're doing from a spending standpoint. And that ultimately influx of kind of like net new capital is driving up asset prices and also consumables and kind of increasing demand. And therefore, until we start to see relief here, then we shouldn't expect inflation to come down materially. And part of the Fed's actions to increase the cost of capital is to drastically reduce the demand for these loans and leases and therefore bring inflation down?

• 9:05Speaker 02

  I think that's a fair assessment, Pomp. And you know, this data here, loans and leases includes consumer loans. It includes loans secured by real estate. It includes commercial and industrial loans. So this is really a full picture of the total credit market, if you will, in terms of the business and consumer demand for new loans.

• 9:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so when we start to see this number come down, how quickly would you expect it to come down? Is it something where, okay, now that everyone realizes the Fed's serious that a 75 basis point hike, and we should expect to see this data like fall off a cliff? Or is it something that's more gradual and kind of takes time for people to recognize? The market is changing, the cost of capital is changing, and therefore, I was going to get a loan in September, but actually, I'm not going to do that. And so that would take a couple of months before it got kind of quote unquote, priced into the market or revealed in this data.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  Sure. So one main point on this that I'd like to say is that I expect to see loans and leases continue to expand, even if we go into a recessionary environment. Because even in that environment, businesses are going to need capital to operate. Right? And so the one thing that I'm really going to be paying attention to is the rate of change in the growth rate of loans and leases. So if we look at the year-over-year growth in loans and leases, it's about 9%. And what's the inflation rate right now? Measured by the CPI, it's 8.6%. And there's no rule or law or theory that says that these should grow in line with each other. But I think if we want to see inflation data materially roll over,

• 10:39Speaker 02

  we're going to need to see a deceleration in the growth rate of loans and leases. I think that's the way that I would put it. And on a year-to-date basis, loans and leases are up almost 4.5%, 5%. So again, we're seeing ample demand from businesses to acquire new debt and expand production, whatever the case is. I'm not sure exactly what they're using the capital for, per se. It could be to buy back their own stock or increase their dividend, right? I'm not sure. But even if we look at subsectors of loans and leases, and we look at something like commercial and industrial loans, which I really view as something like capital expenditures or growth in the production, something of that nature, that number right now is about $2.6 trillion.

• 11:22Speaker 02

  And so that's also growing at a pretty solid rate, much slower than overall loans and leases, but still increasing. So that, to me, just implies that credit creation is on the rise.

• 11:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. When we start to look at something in the Bitcoin market, you've got here Bitcoin and the 20-year Treasuries. What's going on with this one?

• 11:39Speaker 02

  So I love this chart because if we, if we think about the continued institutional adoption of Bitcoin, we really need to look at how traditional markets are view, and traditional investors are viewing Bitcoin as a risk asset and how it fits within a basket of an overall portfolio construction. And from their perspective, Bitcoin is one of the riskiest assets in the world, right? I wouldn't necessarily agree with that per se as a hardcore Bitcoiner, but we need to concede the fact that that's how they see it. And so if we compare Bitcoin, which is a high-risk asset, to something that's basically a risk-less asset, or as close to it as possible, what we can do is we could denominate Bitcoin by 20-year Treasuries.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  And that's essentially what we're looking at here in this chart going back to mid-2016. And we can see the massive acceleration to the upside during that prior bull market cycle. And we peaked there in Q4 2017, and we had this sustained rollover, big breakout at the end of 2021. And now we're coming in to kind of retest this critical support and resistance range. And I'm really big on technical analysis. I absolutely love it, and I think that there's a lot of value to add looking at TA and price structure. And so for me, I look at this and I see a measure of risk appetite and the demand for investors to take on new risk assets in the current macro environment.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  And as we come in and we retest this 2017 peak, I think it's really important that we stay above or within this range. As soon as we break down below it, that would be a key sign from my perspective that we're moving further into a defensive risk-off market.

• 13:22Anthony Pompliano?

  And so is the thought process that Bitcoin could act differently here? So let's say you took Bitcoin, the S and P, NASDAQ, maybe a couple of other assets and denominated it the same way. Would you expect Bitcoin to act in lockstep with other assets? Or could there actually be a difference? And this could be one way to determine when there was some sort of decoupling occurring.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  Sure. So I mean, if we look at the long-term charts, right? We can see that Bitcoin has just demolished the returns of every other asset. So the trend over the long run is up and to the right. But when we think about decoupling or something of that nature, I don't know if we can necessarily come to a conclusion based on these charts. However, if we do denominate Bitcoin in something like the S and P 500 or M2 Money Supply, or even total loans and leases like we were looking at before, right? What we can see is that Bitcoin is broken below those 2017 highs relative to those other assets. So it's possible that we do continue to see further deterioration and moving further into a risk-off environment.

• 14:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's fascinating to kind of think about this. Another thing with Bitcoin, I saw that you were posting correlations. And it seems like you had identified some correlations that maybe other people hadn't noticed yet. Talk me through this one with Micron and kind of what you saw here.

• 14:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. So I love to look at correlation analysis because there's a lot of implications that we can take away, and I'd love to discuss those. With Micron specifically, I was looking at just some charts and I pulled up Micron's stock and their ticker symbol is MU. And I was like, oh, wow, this looks a lot like Bitcoin's price action in 2021. Let me compare them. And sure enough, they overlaid perfectly right on top of each other. And so naturally, my next step was to kind of think, okay, well, how long has this relationship existed? How long has this correlation been working for? And the long-term chart is just, in my opinion, is phenomenal. And going back to 2016, looking at weekly candles here for Bitcoin and the price of Micron Technologies in the teal line, they've literally moved in near-perfect lockstep.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  There's obviously some critical deviation, not critical, but mid. Minimal deviations that do occur, but the long-term trend is pretty unbelievable, in my opinion. And we can think about this in a couple of ways, but I think it's important to note, right? Like, we're talking about a semiconductor stock here. And Pom, I've loved some of the stuff that you've said in the past where you talk about how compute power is arguably the most important commodity in today's modern civilization. And I totally agree with you, right? Like, when I look at the fundamental value of Bitcoin, we can try to get a sentiment for that by looking at the total compute power of the Bitcoin network. And so when we think about semiconductors relative to Bitcoin, I think this is super interesting.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  The odd thing about it from my perspective is, you know, Micron Technologies had over, almost $8 billion in revenue in Q1 this year, and $4.5 billion in profit. They pay a dividend, they have a CEO, they have a marketing team, they have a team of engineers, they're continuously improving on their semiconductors and the capacity there. And somehow, the asset price of that company is moving perfectly in line with the price of Bitcoin over time.

• 16:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Why do you think that that's happening? Is it just the computing power being kind of an overlay, or is there some other reason?

• 16:46Speaker 02

  I think that's definitely part of it. I did some research, and it's hard to find conclusive data on this per se, but The Wall Street Journal wrote in 2021 that

• 16:57Speaker 02

  crypto mining and Bitcoin miners only accounted for like 1% of total semiconductor sales. So it's not conclusive there, per se. I think that number's going to grow over time, personally, but it's definitely interesting to see. I think the one thing that I've kind of settled on with some degree of certainty is that market participants view semiconductor stocks as leveraged or high-beta exposure to technology, which is high-beta and leveraged exposure to the broader stock market. And then when we think about Bitcoin from a traditional perspective, it's largely considered to be one of the most high-beta leveraged assets in terms of returns, right?

• 17:37Speaker 02

  And so I think investors perhaps who are operating on a traditional risk curve are viewing semiconductor stocks and Bitcoin within the same lens. However, with that said, when I look at some semiconductor ETFs and I overlay that on top of the price of Bitcoin, or even if I look at Nvidia or AMD relative to Bitcoin, none of them move nearly in line with Bitcoin's price as Micron does. So this is a really unique relationship that I'm watching specifically.

• 18:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and when you start to think about correlations like this, how do you determine which one is the leading indicator? Is Bitcoin pulling Micron or is Micron pulling Bitcoin, or does it actually not matter?

• 18:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like what came first, the chicken or the egg, right? And so that's totally up for debate. The way I look at it, though, I don't know if we can say whether it matters which one leads, but I think typically we see risk at like the riskier asset lead the other. And so from my perspective, I think it's logical to conclude. And if we back test it a little bit, I basically saw that Bitcoin does peak or bottom slightly before Micron. So I think that's going to be interesting to watch going forward.

• 18:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Are there any other stocks that you saw this with, or Micron was like the most obvious one and the one you did the most work on?

• 18:55Speaker 02

  Micron was by far the most obvious one I've found to date over a long-term basis. If we look at some of the shorter-term correlations, though, there is one that I would love to share with you and your audience, which is Bitcoin's correlation to this ETF called the iShares Expanded Tech ETF. And the ticker symbol for that is IGV. This is a really great ETF, in my opinion. Just to rattle off a couple of names people might be familiar with, the top five holdings of this fund are Microsoft, Salesforce, Adobe, Intuit, and Oracle. So these are some of the top companies in the world. And if we look at the price of Bitcoin relative to IGV since October of 2021, they're really moving in total lockstep.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  And you might ask why I'm starting from October 2021. And one of the reasons why I'm doing that is because they were both rising into that November peak, peaked almost exactly at the same time and have felt similar price pressures to the downside since that peak in Q4. And so If we, you know, I think I generally like to say this, that there's a lot of talk about Bitcoin's correlation to stocks. And I think generally that's a fair assessment to make and we can prove that and see that it's true. However, the stock market is such a broad and encompassing term, right? Are we talking about healthcare stocks? Are we talking about energy stocks? Are we talking about tech, consumer, like what are we talking about, right?

• 20:20Speaker 02

  So it's accurate, but it's a little bit misrepresentative to just say that Bitcoin is correlated to the stock market when we can find relationships like IGV here. And so in the lower bound of this chart, I'd just like to say I've added something called the correlation coefficient. And the correlation coefficient essentially measures the move of one asset relative to another over a certain period of time. So beginning over a 250 day period since October of 2021, the correlation coefficient between Bitcoin and IGV is 95%. That's a ridiculously high correlation. To contextualize it, the relationship, the correlation coefficient between Bitcoin and Ethereum is 95%. And those are in the same asset classes.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  If we look at the correlation coefficient between Bitcoin and the S and P 500, it's 0.80%. So clearly this is giving us a much better indication of correlation.

• 21:14Anthony Pompliano?

  How much of the correlations right now are, it's all one big trade, the Fed's in control. The asset prices or asset correlations will all go towards one. And so Bitcoin as an example, for years and years, we could emphatically claim Bitcoin was a non-correlated asset. You put it into a portfolio, you include Sharpe ratios, et cetera. It had, you know, very specific advantageous characteristics and impact on a portfolio. It seems like some of this is changing now. And now, as you're mentioning, correlations are, you know, rising very quickly between Bitcoin and some of these other assets. Is that more macro environment? Or is that like the holder base and investor base is changing? And now they're treating it like a risk asset?

• 21:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Like what's kind of changing the, the underlying kind of inputs for these correlations to continue to go up?

• 22:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I mean, it's purely speculative. I think this is so subjective, but from my opinion. It's definitely a mixture of both of those things, but I would say predominantly it's the former. Right? We're in a macro dominated environment right now where everyone is paying attention to the Fed and monetary policy. Economic growth, right? We're seeing a big slowdown and even outright contractions in GDP. The Atlanta Fed does their GDP now. They're basically forecasting 0.0% real GDP growth in Q2. And that number just continues to go lower and be revised lower. So I wouldn't be surprised if in the next week or two, we see a formal negative GDP forecast for Q2 by the Atlanta Fed.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  And so I think that a lot of this just has to do with broader risk appetite dynamics, which are being driven by monetary policy in the macro environment.

• 22:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. When you start to look out, obviously we have Janet Yellen, who recently has said that she doesn't believe a recession is imminent. She does agree that inflation is too high. And it seems like there's a little bit of a confidence game of like, you know, trust us, we've got this, we'll get inflation down, we'll find the soft landing. And she's a Treasury Secretary, so she's not running the Fed, she's not kind of driving that process, but obviously heavily involved. How much weight do you put on their talk of recession is not imminent versus kind of the everyday investor or even the everyday consumer saying like, I think that there's probably a higher percentage chance than you guys are putting on it.

• 23:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm not putting any weight on what Yellen is talking about. Last I checked, she was the person saying that we wouldn't get inflation and if we did, it would be extremely transitory and short-lived. Credit to her for admitting her mistake earlier this year and, you know, saying that she was wrong in her assessment of that. But what's stopping her from being wrong this time?

• 23:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, well, listen, I, nothing, zero.

• 23:57Speaker 02

  With all due respect to Ms. Yellen.

• 23:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah. And I think part of this is important, right, is you can have a polite conversation, you can have a disagreement between what's going to happen in the future. And the difference between policymakers and market participants is that the market participants are literally wagering money on what they Things gonna happen and kind of have the skin in the game. Whereas the policymakers, there's not as much of a feedback, right? There's not as much of kind of repercussions in a positive or negative way for for their thought process and the decisions that they end up making. When you then start to look at things like gasoline prices in America, you also look at something like food at home is up, you know, 12% I think over the last 12 months.

• 24:41Anthony Pompliano?

  How much of food and energy, pure supply chains, geopolitical kind of uncertainty, even conflict, Russia, Ukraine versus like, no, man, you guys just exploded the money supply and like, everything was going up regardless of what happened, you know, anywhere else in the world?

• 24:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think most of the inflation that we're seeing today is a consequence of enormous fiscal and monetary policy and the combination of those two, right? We didn't get much inflation following the Great Recession, even though we also fired a monetary bazooka at the economy, because at the time, we didn't really get the follow through in the fiscal policy side. Whereas obviously, since 2020 and the COVID pandemic, we got an enormous dose of both. That's now been exacerbated by supply chain dynamics, a really strong consumer, and now with the geopolitical conflict and the Russia-Ukraine situation. But generally speaking, you can't credibly talk about inflation, in my opinion, without

• 25:41Speaker 02

  discussing the significance and the impact that the Fed monetary policy and fiscal policy have on the current environment.

• 25:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. When you think about that, Nick Carter recently tweeted, and he said that he wasn't a Fed watcher, but his thought process was they were so embarrassed by being so wrong on inflation that they basically were going to plunge the economy into such a dire situation to ensure that they, you know, kind of cut the head off of inflation, and that was their legacy. How much weight do you put on that? Like, is that kind of your thought process of like, it's almost the equivalent of like, you know, revenge trading, but now we have like revenge monetary policy?

• 26:23Speaker 02

  So the Fed has not been friendly for their own credibility, right? Mohamed El-Erian is one of the economists who I pay attention to probably most acutely out of all the economists that I listen to. And he's been talking for months, if not almost a year, about how the Fed has done a lot to damage their credibility during this time. Like, why was the Fed still purchasing mortgage-backed securities and treasuries at billions and billions of dollars a month when we were having inflation above 8%? It just didn't really make sense in a historical context. And so I would somewhat agree with Nick's point that the Fed now is having to make up for lost ground in order to try to reaffirm and rebuild some of their credibility.

• 27:06Speaker 02

  I think a lot of Fed officials in the past have even talked about how one of the biggest, what's the word here? Basically, like, one of the biggest attributes the Fed has and one of the biggest benefits that they have is their credibility. And as soon as that credibility gets lost, then we could see inflation expectations become unhinged, as the Fed would say, right? So I would definitely agree with that. And there's actually one way that I measure how far behind the curve the Fed is. And that's looking at the two-year Treasury yield compared to the effective federal funds rate. And the effective federal funds rate historically moves in line with the two-year Treasury yield. And what we tend to see is that the two-year Treasury yield is above the federal funds rate.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  But right now, we've had this enormous, historically large gap between the two-year yield and the federal funds rate. After last week's 0.75% rate hike, that gap has now closed, but we're still, the spread between those two variables is about 1.6%. So the Fed, in my opinion, in order to get rates closer to neutral, still has at least 1.5% to go in terms of rate hikes.

• 28:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. So you think that they're going to be able to do this?

• 28:15Speaker 02

  I have thought about this a lot and I'm not entirely sure. I think this is the most forecasted recession we've ever had, right? Everyone is talking about recessions and a looming recession. Even if we look at Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan, right? If we look at the rhetoric in 2006 and 2007, I can't remember what his name was, but the CEO of Citibank at the time was using language like, as long as the music's playing, you have to dance, right? And then all of a sudden we have the housing crisis. We're not hearing remotely similar language in today's environment. In fact, banks appear to be very defensive with their balance sheet and very prudent in allocating new capital. So from my perspective,

• 29:00Speaker 02

  I actually think recessionary fears are a little bit overstated, but it's still the most likely improbable case. I think the Fed can do engineer, as they would say, a recession, but I don't think we'll have a soft landing. I think we'll have a soft-ish landing, but still have a relatively significant recession.

• 29:23Anthony Pompliano?

  In that recession, how would you measure like the severity of it? Is it just on pure job loss and economic contraction? Are there other things you would look at?

• 29:31Speaker 02

  We would definitely need to be watching unemployment rate and labor force participation rate. I know right now that the labor force participation rate as of the most recent data was something around just above 62%. I think it was 62.3 off the top of my head. But if we look at something like the prime age labor force participation rate, which is measuring the participation rate of people, I think it's 25 to 55 years old. That's around 83% and has totally recouped most of the pandemic losses. So if we, if one way that we would quantify a recession and the impact of the Fed's tightening cycle is seeing labor market data cool off.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  So I wouldn't be surprised at all to see over 4% in the unemployment rate in the next two to three months.

• 30:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. When you start to look at wage growth, obviously, the inflation adjusted hourly wage growth in America has been down for 14 months, which is just like a mind blowing statistic on its own. And then couple in the inflation level at a 40 year high and then, don't worry, a recession's not coming, coming from some of the policymakers. How important is it to continue to pay attention to the actual wage growth itself?

• 30:45Speaker 02

  It's super important. And I would actually encourage people to look at another piece of data on this, which is the quits rate. When people are quitting their job at a historically elevated pace, I think right now the rate is about 2.9%, which is at or near historic highs. What that to me indicates, extreme flexibility and a dynamic labor market that is allowing people to go out, because people aren't just quitting their jobs and becoming unemployed, they're finding better opportunities that are more aligned with their skills and interests at a higher, at a higher wage and salary. And so if the quits rate continues to remain elevated, I think that will continue to kind of feed into this wage price spiral. Clearly, as you pointed out, real wage growth is negative, but nominal

• 31:27Speaker 02

  wage growth is like above 5%. I don't know the exact number on a year over year basis. But it's, it's still historically strong. And so both of those things, the high quits rate and strong nominal wage growth are definitely feeding into the inflation dynamics.

• 31:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. When you look forward, is there any surprises that you would predict? Like, what are you thinking that could happen that maybe other people either aren't putting weight on or are discounting at the moment?

• 31:55Speaker 02

  Oh, that's a great question, Pomp. I am not prepared to answer that one. If we do this again, I'll give you an answer.

• 32:01Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Was that like a little slick, hey, I'm coming back?

• 32:06Speaker 02

  Hey, let's see.

• 32:08Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, where can we send someone to find you on the internet or subscribe to any of your research?

• 32:13Speaker 02

  Check me out on Twitter for sure, just @CalebFranzen. I also have a newsletter that I post weekly, a free newsletter on Substack under Cubic Analytics. That's it right there. And then actually, last week, I just started a YouTube channel, Cubic Analytics on YouTube. Definitely check that out. I think I've only done three videos, but I'll definitely be discussing more and sharing as much research as I can. So, yeah.

• 32:36Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, we're gonna get 13,000 followers. We'll see what we can do to that number. We can juice that one up there for you. I appreciate all the insights. I've been learning a lot, so we'll definitely bring you back and you can come back, teach me and teach the audience as much as possible. So keep up the great work and we'll talk soon.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  Thank you, Pomp. Look forward to it.

• 32:54Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, later, buddy.

• 32:55Speaker 02

  Bye.

• 32:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you guys enjoyed this one. Make sure you subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to try to transition to get a new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to pompscryptocourse.com. We've developed a curriculum with the top teams across the industry. It's a three-week intensive training program with over 50 events packed into that three-week time period. Go to pompscryptocourse.com to learn more, and I'll meet you guys for the next episode.