The Breakdown

Tavi Costa is a portfolio manager at Crescat Capital. In this conversation with NLW, he discusses: The credit exhaustion moment in the engines of global growth The race to the bottom for fiat currencies The explosive moment for precious metals  Where bitcoin might fit in this larger framework  Find our guest online: Twitter: @TaviCosta Instagram: @TaviCostaMacro Website: https://www.crescat.net

Today on the Brief: Jobless claims slightly exceed expectations at 884,000 ECB keeps policy unchained; euro rises versus dollar  Survey: What’s the right way to understand the business and market cycle in the U.S. today?  Our main discussion: interest rates and the undermining of American resilience.  In this discussion, NLW looks at a number of artifacts of the low interest rate world, including:...

Today on the Brief: Markets recover slightly but vaccine trade falters as AstraZeneca pauses trials  Bitcoin and gold correlation increases sharply around dollar instability Mastercard launches simulation tools to help develop central bank digital currencies Our main discussion: Stan Druckenmiller speaks! NLW breaks down the famed investor’s interview with CNBC today, including:  The merging of th...

Today on the Brief: Stock market continues its descent Insider stock selling reached five-year high in August President Trump promises more aggressive decoupling from China Our main discussion: Investors and the BTC price dip. Over the last several weeks, bitcoin has pulled back from $12,400 to around $10,000. This dip has happened alongside a broader retracement in equities, led by falling tech s...

On this special Labor Day edition of The Breakdown, NLW is doing a reading of Nic Carter’s most recent essay “The Crypto-Dollar Surge and the American Opportunity.” In it, Carter argues that rather than fight the tide, the U.S. government should accept and take advantage of its unique position in the emerging world of global crypto monies.

Earlier this week, news broke that David Graeber, author of influential works such as “Debt: The First 5000 Years,” had passed away.  In his memory, today’s Long Reads Sunday is a reading of his 2013 piece “A Practical Utopian’s Guide to the Coming Collapse.”  In it, he argues the impact of the revolutionary period of the 1960s was much more profound than popular opinion has it, and that the age o...

On this episode of The Breakdown Weekly Recap, NLW looks at the full story the stock markets are telling us about the economy, including: SoftBank unmasked as the “Nasdaq whale” playing the same options game with stocks as r/WallStreetBets The Tesla stock split game: Does this just mean it’s for n00bs and rubes?  The VIX shows November nervousness Can you hear it? As stocks slide, the money printe...

Inspired by Michael Batnik’s “All Wrapped In One,” this episode examines eight moments from history that can help us make sense of one of the most chaotic years of our lives.  Income inequality of the Gilded Age The election of 1896 The pandemic of 1918 The economy of 1929 The social movements of the 1960s The stock market of 1987 The speculation of 1999 The housing market of 2006

Today on the Brief: Traditional markets falter, led down by tech stocks Bitcoin falls under $11,000 for the first time since July Stablecoins mint $100m daily since mid-July Our main discussion is about DeFi’s “degens.” NLW talks about: The numbers behind DeFi’s recent run up What “degen” means in this context Why degen is in part a reaction to previous bitcoiner critiques of Ethereum  Why degen i...

Today on the Brief: Debt will exceed U.S. GDP for the first time since 1946 SPACs in action! Decentralized exchange volume flippens centralized exchanges  Our main conversation is with Luke Gromen, founder of the Forest for the Trees consulting firm.  In this conversation, we discuss:  Chairman Powell’s speech and whether this is a true policy departure The evolving relationship between the Federa...

August has come to a close. In this recap and “best of” episode, NLW looks at the big themes that defined the month. Most notable was the discussion of inflation culminating in the Federal Reserve’s newly announced policy of average inflation targeting.  This episode featured commentary from: Tony Greer - Author, Morning Navigator  Keith McCullough - CEO, Hedgeye Chris McCann - General Partner, Ra...

Today’s episode of The Breakdown looks at the stories the stock market is trying to tell, including: New all time high in total market capitalization to GDP ratio (higher than dotcom bubble)  “No precedent for how high” valuations can go  Fed denies asset bubble; intimates it wouldn’t care about asset bubbles if full unemployment comes with it Bezos at $200,000,000,000 Percentage of stocks traded...

This week’s episode of Long Reads Sunday is a reading of the latest essay from Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. The essay looks systematically at the problems of the slate of current store-of-value assets, including the U.S. dollar, oil and gold.  The brothers argue why those assets have, or are starting to have, value in their safe haven function, while bitcoin is on the rise.

On The Breakdown’s Weekly Recap, NLW looks at the shifting sands of the global economy. He says Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s speech at Jackson Hole this week was an argument that an era that began in the 1970s is now closing.  At the same time, he argues Powell did very little to provide a vision for what comes next. Instead, it is the alternative economic philosophies – Modern Monetary T...

Today on the Brief: Skepticism around Powell’s inflation prognostications The Tesla Stock Split Game China’s COVID-19 vaccine maker presses countries for early adoption Our main discussion: The Anxiety Index We live in an economy organized around consumption and perpetual growth. In that context, factors that cause consumers to be fearful, reduce spending, increase savings, move less and generally...

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell spoke Thursday at the annual Jackson Hole conference convened by the Kansas City Fed, which was virtual this year due to COVID-19.  In the highly anticipated speech, Powell laid out a number of key changes to how the Fed approaches unemployment and inflation.  In this recap, NLW looks at how people reacted to the speech. On the one hand, there is disagreement be...

Today on the Brief  The SEC changes accredited investor rules  Fintech and crypto investor Ribbit Capital starts $350 million SPAC Previewing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s Jackson Hole speech Our main conversation is with Ruben Galindo, CEO and co-founder of Airtm. Airtm is a global dollar account that lets users anywhere access U.S. dollars, powered by cryptocurrency infrastructure and a...

Today’s episode of The Breakdown is an extended edition of the Brief. NLW discusses: The “COVID-19 vaccine trade” on Wall Street kicks markets higher The latest on TikTok vs. the U.S. and what it means for the U.S.-China relationship More companies move reserves from cash to bitcoin The final topic today looks at news that some large money market funds are shifting fees from users and taking the f...

Our guest today is Adam Tooze. Adam holds the Shelby Cullom Davis Chair of History at Columbia University and serves as director of its European Institute. He is known for his books “The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order” and “Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World.”  In this conversation, he and NLW discuss: Historical analogies for our prese...

On today’s edition of The Breakdown’s Long Reads Sunday, our selections have to do with one of the hottest topics in central banking: yield curve control.  “What Is Yield Curve Control?” The first piece is from the St. Louis Federal Reserve and is a primer on YCC, including past U.S. implementations as well as versions from Japan and Australia.  “Market Jitters Show How Much Fed Medicine Matters”...

Today on The Breakdown’s Weekly Recap: People aren’t buying “the Great American Recovery” Let’s stop considering the economy as one thing Dave Portnoy doesn’t care about your principles DeFi is the Wild West and saved only by the fact that no normie understands what the hell is going on Bitcoin is being compared to the dollar not stocks and that’s serious progress

The “three-body problem” is a physics issue that deals with unpredictable futures.  In a recent essay, John Mauldin argues the economy is actually experiencing an “eight-body problem.”  On today’s episode, NLW explores each of those dimensions shaping the challenge we face, including: Central bank intervention The destruction of the service industry The implosion of global trade  In the end, he ar...

Today on the Brief: Markets react to FOMC notes Taiwan blocks China streaming services Initial jobless claims back on the rise Our main discussion is a look at the politicians on both sides of the aisle who are pro-digital currencies and, especially, pro-bitcoin. Featuring: Rep. Thomas Massie Governor Jared Polis Andrew Yang Rep. Ted Budd Rep. Trey Hollingsworth Rep. Darren Soto Rep. Stacey Plaske...

Today, NLW debuts a new format: “10 Takes in 10(ish) Minutes.”  In this analysis, he looks at 10 takes surrounding the S&P 500’s return to positive territory on the year, including: Great American comeback Market disconnect and widening inequality  Don’t fight the Fed To the Stoolies go the spoils Stock splits and SPACs It’s Tech vs. everything else Cantillon insiders FTW A new era of global liqui...

Today on the Brief: Everyone turns bullish as S&P 500 nears all-time highs Emerging market currencies are floundering  Bitcoin holding sentiment highest in two years Our main conversation features Race Capital’s Chris McCann. Chris was previously the founder of Startup Digest, building it to 1 million subscriptions long before email newsletters were a thing. He spent four years building the commun...