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Until home prices fall, the only buyers will be those who pay cash. So, these are probably people my age. But no, young people with families — they will not be involved in the real estate market. The middle class, the upper middle class—they definitely won't buy anything. At least until prices drop.
And meanwhile, jobs in sectors of the economy related to housing will disappear completely. You're in for massive layoffs in everything related to home sales, construction, refinancing—all of these relevant professions: mortgage brokers, realtors, contractors, and even the workers themselves. The entire industry will grind to a halt until prices fall .
But even after the collapse, new construction will not begin, although certain transactions will occur. We will have many cases of seizure of property for debts, right? So by that time everything will be dead. Well, I've always argued: if you admit that we're on an unsustainable path, how do you know when we'll reach the end point of that path?
Because I think we're already there, and the markets are finally starting to realize it. So lenders will demand significantly higher interest rates for loans to the US government or any other US dollar borrower precisely because of what Donald Trump said the other day. I think Trump said last Friday that one of the benefits of inflation is that it pays off our debt very quickly.
And that's not what our creditors want to hear. They don't want to hear that the dollars they get back will have almost no value. So instead of waiting for inflation to destroy the value of their bonds, they simply cash out now. And that's what's creating downward pressure on bond prices and upward pressure on rates.
But the real bad news is not where the rates are now, but where they are headed, because they will be significantly higher. We already have the highest rates since 2002. As we speak , 5-year Treasury bonds are at 5.09%. 10-year—5.33%. And 30- year-olds—5.69%. These are the highest yielding rates at the moment, but by tomorrow, or probably by the end of the day, they will no longer be so.
But we will move on. People forget that we were in a " bull" bond market, which meant falling yields for 40 years. The yield on 10-year Treasury bonds has gone from 16% in 1981 to less than 1% in 2021. You know , over the same period of time, the rate on a 30- year fixed-rate mortgage fell from 18% to 2.5/8%.
Now this process has gone in reverse. Mortgages are now above 7.5% , and Treasury bonds are around 5.3 %, but we are returning to those levels, perhaps even higher. But you know, somewhere between now and then we're going to have a complete economic collapse, because today we have too much debt to afford to pay such interest.
Um, you know, I talked about this on my podcast, that we're in phase four of debt. The first period was when we had low debt levels and low interest rates, and that was great. We didn't borrow a lot of money. The government did not have a budget deficit. People saved a lot , so we had low interest rates and we didn't have a lot of debt.
Then the debt began to grow rapidly in the 1970s and 1980s. And as a result, debt was still low in absolute terms, just not as low as it had been, but the bond market was concerned about the accumulation of debt. And that's why interest rates have increased significantly. So, we had low debt levels and high interest rates.
The high rates were acceptable because we didn't have much debt to pay those rates on. The next phase actually began with the 2008 financial crisis . The debt grew even more, but then interest rates collapsed. So back then we had very high debt but very low interest rates. And it was this combination that made such a huge debt manageable, seemingly affordable.
And that's what caused the complacency over the last few decades about accumulating debt, because everyone said, "Well, we can afford it." This is not such a big problem. Look, look how low the interest rates are. Well, now we are entering the fourth phase, which involves high debt and high interest rates.
Of course, we will have the highest debt we have ever had, and we may even have the highest interest rates at the same time. And so this entire economy will explode from within, because it is built on a foundation of debt that is impossible to service. Um, the housing market is going to completely collapse because it's built on cheap money that no longer exists.
And actually, I just talked about this on my last podcast, but people underestimate how important real estate has been to the entire consumer economy. After all, what provided consumers with high purchasing power was not only capital from rising real estate prices, but also the constant cash-out refinancing that Americans had been doing for 40 years: every few years, you could refinance your mortgage, get cash to spend, and at the same time reduce your monthly payment.
So it was like a gift that never ended. This was a lifeline for the consumer, which has now been cut off because refinancing is no longer available. Mortgage rates will only continue to rise and rise. And the only thing that can change is the price of housing, because it was cheap mortgages that made expensive houses affordable.
So when mortgage rates go back to 9%, 10%, 11 %, 12%, which is where they are headed, no one, at least most Americans, will be able to afford to buy a house at today's prices . This is simply impossible. Therefore, the only way to make a deal happen is for housing prices to collapse. And this has its consequences, because for many Americans it means bankruptcy.
They are ruined. This is their greatest asset. They lost him. And that means that many banks, lenders who have lent a lot of money to homeowners , are suffering serious losses. You know, the next Fanny and Freddy bankruptcy will probably be bigger than what we had in 2008. It's a good thing that Trump failed to complete privatization.
Until home prices fall, the only buyers will be those who pay cash. So, these are probably people my age. But no , young people with families—they will not be involved in the housing market. The middle class, the wealthy middle class—they won't be able to buy anything. At least until the prices collapse.
Meanwhile, jobs in housing-related sectors of the economy will disappear completely. You're going to see mass layoffs in everything related to home sales, construction, refinancing—all of these related professions: mortgage brokers, realtors, contractors, laborers. The entire industry will grind to a halt until prices drop.
But even after the price collapse, there will be no new construction, although we will see some deals. We're going to have a lot of bail enforcement cases, right? So by then everything will be dead. The problem is that much of this is not because people have created a lot of new wealth. This is largely due to rising asset prices, which was a result of inflation.
So the same monetary policy that makes products in stores so expensive also makes stocks more expensive. But this has a positive impact on people's wealth, doesn't it? Because, you know, obviously, higher food prices— if you're not a farmer— don't help you at all . You need to eat, and you are forced to pay these prices every time you go to the supermarket.
But in the stock market, you simply hold your shares and then calculate your capital based on their value. Something has to happen here, because stocks have continued to rise despite rising bond yields , and while some attribute the rise in yields to capital spending by the G7, sooner or later there will be a collision because interest rates will not stop rising.
So at some point these higher rates will start to affect the markets and the economy, and at some point you will see a significant drop in stock prices. You know, markets can ignore rising yields for a while . I mean the most dramatic example—1987, when bond yields rose for almost the entire year. Of course, it was much higher than it is now.
But it continued to rise, and the stock market continued to ignore it until October. And then the crash happened, and it was the stock market crash that finally provided support for the bond market, after which we saw a massive rally in bonds as the stock market finally turned its attention to debt and crashed.
So maybe we'll see something like that. I don't know. Well, obviously our debt is $40 trillion. And it is growing by two to three trillion a year. Interest is already consuming one and a half, or 1.3 trillion per year. This has already surpassed national defense spending as the largest budget item. By next year, that amount will exceed Social Security spending, when we will be spending over $2 trillion a year on debt service .
We're not even officially in a recession yet. And it became clear that neither the Republican nor the Democratic Party cared about the debt, how big it was, or how much the government spent. So how can our creditors not worry? It makes no sense at all that they are so self-confident now, despite the irrefutable evidence that we are heading towards a crisis.
Look what happened to the price of gold. It didn't go from 2,000 to over 5,000 per ounce in about a year just like that. And it was n't American speculators or investors who were buying it. These were foreign central banks. Why do they do this? They are abandoning the dollar. They are already doing it.
Look at what is happening with the Bank of Japan now. But China has been doing this for a long time . Russia started doing this after sanctions. But, you know, countries are moving away from the US dollar, despite the fact that they could be getting 5% returns on Treasury bonds. They would rather own gold and receive no income than have bonds with a 5 % yield.
This says a lot about how concerned they are now about the US debt situation. So for me, this is the most logical explanation. It's just long overdue. This should have happened a long time ago . Investors should have put all the facts together years ago. But they didn't do it. But you know, now they're finally concerned about it, and we're doing nothing.
You know, I was pointing out that this was interesting. I think maybe a year ago, it was Hank Paulson, the former Treasury Secretary. He saw that the crisis was approaching. And so he publicly stated that the US should develop a contingency plan to deal with the collapse in demand for Treasury bonds.
He did n't even try to say, "Hey, let's do something to prevent a crisis. Let's get our house in order now, before a crisis hits. Let's restore confidence in the bond markets. Let's cut government spending. Let's reduce the deficit." He knew it was a waste of time. So, in essence, he said, " Listen, we're going to have a crisis.
We better have a contingency plan, because otherwise we're going to have a crisis, and we won't even have a plan ." That's not even the entire US stock market . You're talking about a couple dozen stocks. Yes. I mean, on average, I did the numbers myself last week, and when the S&P was within 1% of its record high, about 430 of those stocks were down an average of 21.5% from their highs.
Those 430 are about 86% of them, and 60% of those names fell more than 20% on their own. So, 60% of the S&P is now officially in a " bear" market. Okay. So this isn't even our entire American stock market. It's just our mega-tech stocks like Nvidia, Meta, Alphabet, or Microsoft—these multi-trillion dollar companies that, collectively, at this rate, will make the market even more distorted.
That is, I mean, the indicators will only increase. So, is this even real? Is it just a complete... in touch with us .
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