Hidden Forces

In Episode 331 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Andy Constan and Mike Green after a week of turmoil in the bond market that saw a dramatic repricing of long-term government debt, raising debt servicing costs for the US government and sending yields on 10-year Treasury bonds to nearly 5%. Demetri, Andy, and Mike spend the first hour of their conversation trying to make sense of the rec...

In Episode 330 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Henry Olsen, author of "Working Class Republican" and "The Four Faces of the Republican Party," about where the United States and other western democratic countries find themselves politically today, the sources of populism's broad, international appeal, and why he believes that we are living through the kind of political realignment tha...

In Episode 329 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Dylan Patel, a semiconductor and A.I. analyst and the founder of boutique Semiconductor research and consulting firm SemiAnalysis, about how U.S. semiconductor export controls are failing and what the U.S. can do about it. Dylan and Demetri spend the first hour of their conversation going over Huawei's groundbreaking new Kirin 9000s chi...

In Episode 328 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Brad Setser, the Whitney Shepardson Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations where he specializes in global trade and capital flows, financial vulnerability analysis, and sovereign debt restructuring. Brad has also served in multiple Democrat administrations as a senior advisor to the U.S. Trade Representative, as deputy assista...

In Episode 327 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Diana Choyleva in what was originally recorded as a live Q&A for members of our Genius Community. The subject of the Q&A is the latest state of US-China relations with an emphasis on some of the most recent headlines related Huawei's latest 5G phone with its domestically produced 7nm chip, China's naval exercises in the pacific, as well...

In Episode 326 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Alex Velez-Green, the fmr. National Security Advisor to U.S. Senator Josh Hawley, who helped staff the senator on the Armed Services Committee and advised him on matters related to strengthening deterrence against China, including U.S. conventional and nuclear force structure and posture. Alex and Demetri discuss the perilous situation...

In Episode 325 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Michael Nicoletos, the founder and CEO of DeFi Advisors, an independent investment advisory firm specializing in macro and digital assets. Michael and Demetri spend the first twenty minutes discussing Michael's biography, including his time living and working in the United States. What that experience taught him about the country's capac...

In Episode 324 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Mauro Guillen, a Professor of Multinational Management and Vice Dean of the Executive MBA Program at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Mauro combines his training as a sociologist and his experience as a business economist to identify and quantify the most promising opportunities at the intersection of demographic, ec...

In Episode 323 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with the former Chief Economist at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Director of the Center for Politics, Economics, and History at the University of Texas at Austin, Charles Calomiris about his recently published paper "Fiscal Dominance and the Return of Zero-Interest Bank Reserve Requirements." In the paper, Dr. Calomir...

In Episode 322 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with someone he has gotten to know mainly by following his anonymous account on Twitter where he goes by the name Shrubbery Capital or Le Shrub, for short. Le Shrub consistently provides some of the most entertaining and clever market commentary you will find anywhere and Demetri could not resist the opportunity to have him on the podcast, e...

In Episode 321 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with bestselling author, renowned historian, economist, and theorist of generational change, Neil Howe. Twenty-five years ago, Neil and his late co-author William Strauss put forward a provocative new theory of American history. Looking back over the last 500 years, they'd uncovered a distinct pattern: modern history moves in cycles, each one...

In Episode 320 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Peter Atwater, a recognized expert on the impact of confidence on individual and group decision-making, which he examines in his book, "The Confidence Map: Charting a Path From Chaos to Clarity." In today's conversation, you are going to learn about the hidden role that confidence plays in the choices we make, and why events that are of...

In Episode 319 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Carol Roth, the author of "You Will Own Nothing: Your War with a New Financial World Order and How to Fight Back." The argument that Carol makes in the book is that we are on the precipice of a new financial world order, one that will fundamentally change the fortunes of hundreds of millions if not billions of people across the western w...

In Episode 318 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with political and financial historians Edward Chancellor, Russell Napier, and Helen Thompson. All three have appeared individually on the podcast before and joined Demetri ahead of his latest Genius community dinner in London to discuss the changing nature of the international economic and political order. Many of the material changes we ar...

In Episode 317 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with General Mick Ryan. Mick Ryan is an author, strategist, and retired major general who has commanded at multiple levels in the Australian Army and served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and East Timor. After decades of brinkmanship and confrontation, the United States and China finally go to war when China invades the island of Taiwan. This is the...

In Episode 316 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Andy Constan about this week's FOMC meeting and what the Federal Reserve rate decision could signal about the direction of interest rates, inflation, and economic growth. Will it be heralded as the long anticipate Fed pivot or seen as yet another head fake on our way toward "higher for longer," serving as a drag on equity valuations and...

In Episode 315 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas is joined by Nicholas Danforth and Amberin Zaman to discuss the significance of the recent elections in Turkey for Turkish politics, the country's complex relationship with its neighbors and allies in Europe and the United States, and for the Turkish economy, which has been teetering on the edge of a balance of payments crisis with no easy solution...

In Episode 314 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with novelist, sociologist, and theologian Tara Isabella Burton about America's new religions, the evolution of the self in contemporary culture, and what it all means for the future of Western society. Tara Isabella Burton's writings about religion and culture provide some of the sharpest, most insightful commentary about contemporary life t...

In Episode 313 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Bob Elliott, the co-founder and CEO of Unlimited, a financial services firm that uses machine learning to create products that replicate the index returns of alternative investments. Demetri asked Bob onto the podcast to help sort through the noise of this latest financial news cycle as it pertains to the debt ceiling debate, regional b...

In Episode 312 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofians speaks with Jean Twenge, a researcher and professor of psychology who has written extensively about generational differences. Jean Twenge explains what we know about every generation born since 1925, arguing that the strongest candidate for explaining generational change is advancements in technology. Twenge spends the first hour discussing what we...

In Episode 311 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Serhii Plokhy, the director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University and a leading authority on Ukraine, Russia, and Eastern Europe. Plokhii has published extensively on the international history of World War II and the Cold War and he joins Demetri to discuss the subject of his latest book on the Russo-Ukrainian war and...

In Episode 310 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with writer and author Jared Dillian in what was originally aired as a Live Q&A for members of the Hidden Forces Genius Community. Jared is the editor of The Daily Dirtnap, a daily market newsletter for investment professionals focused on gauging and capitalizing on changes in market sentiment. He's also the author of several successful book...

In Episode 309 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Jacob Siegel, a senior editor at Tablet magazine and the author of a widely shared article about disinformation titled, "A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century." The 'hoax' according to Siegel is the information war itself, which he believes conflates the anti-establishment politics of domestic populists with acts of war by for...

In Episode 308 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Josh Wolfe, co-founder and managing partner at Lux Capital about the state of venture investing and how venture capital is disrupting the battlefield and changing the nature of warfare. Josh and Demetri spend the first hour of their conversation discussing the rise of narrative warfare and how social media, synthetic media, and historica...

In Episode 307 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with the founder and CEO of Betaworks, John Borthwick about the current moment in artificial intelligence. In John's first appearance on the podcast in 2017, Demetri and he spoke about the challenges and opportunities present in the field of A.I. and how we could progress technologically into an immersive future of superintelligence and simul...