Peter’s back in Puerto Rico for this episode. He explains his theory behind the market’s bounce back last week, notes why last week’s panic bodes poorly for Bitcoin, and comments on two major political events— Kamala Harris’s VP pick and the “hate speech” clamp-down in the United Kingdom.
With more evidence mounting of a recession, Peter reminds us that the Fed’s policy over the last few decades makes such a recession inevitable:
“The right thing is to raise rates more and let the chips fall where they may. Sure, stocks are going to crash. Real estate is going to crash. We’re going to have a hard landing. It’s going to be a recession. But unfortunately, that’s what we need. Not because it’s fun, but because it’s necessary. Now, if you don’t want to have this necessary crash, then the Fed never should have made that deal with the devil, because the devil is going to come to collect eventually.”
Even though rate cuts are the wrong move, the markets are confident cuts are coming in September or even earlier:
“I said on my podcast that if we didn’t get the emergency rate cut, we were getting a cut for sure in September. I just thought they may not even wait until September. They may have to do it sooner. And they still might because we still have a long time between that September meeting and right now. But because the bond market started to price that in and rates went down, that helped the markets, because the markets saw this and they’re like, ‘Ok, the Fed is definitely going to cut now.’ … The market now realizes that the Fed is going to move on in September no matter what. And that I think that helped the market’s psychology.”
Bitcoin’s recent performance demonstrates why it’s a bad choice for a federal Bitcoin reserve:
“When everything was going down, Bitcoin went down the most. And they’re trying to get the government to have a Bitcoin reserve? You can’t have a reserve asset that’s the most volatile asset. The reserve asset is the one you’re supposed to rely on. When everything else is selling off, you can use that reserve asset. But how can you use a reserve asset that goes down even more than the stuff you’re trying to hedge?”
In election news, Kamala Harris has chosen Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate. Peter thinks Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro would have been a better pick, but the media is keen to defend Harris against any criticism:
“The media has been repackaging and rebranding her. I mean, they’re lying as much about Harris as they were about Biden. The same people had said, ‘Biden is sharp as a tack,’ right? And then kick him to the curb as soon as that lie was exposed. Now they’ve got a new lie about how great Kamala Harris is. As long as she keeps her mouth shut and nobody actually hears her talk, they can keep selling her to the American public like she’s the greatest thing. And apparently it’s working.”
With the United Kingdom government cracking down on protests and online social media posts, Peter explains why free speech is so important:
“If you’re not allowed to be offensive, if you’re not allowed to hurt other people’s feelings, then you don’t have freedom of speech. Well, what do you have? The whole concept of free speech is that you have to defend the rights of people to say things that you disagree with— that may be offensive to you, that may be hateful. Because the minute you let the government decide, the government can decide, ‘what is offensive? What is hateful?’ Well, then they can make anything they want hateful or offensive.”
