저자: Kevin · 외국인
요약 보기
트럼프의 2,000달러 관세배당 지급 재확인과 이에 대한 WSJ 비판, 스캇 베신트 발언 혼선을 다룸. 관세·현금지급은 인플레 압력이라 연준의 금리인하 여지를 좁힌다고 분석. 고용지표 둔화(해고계획 발표 2008년 이후 최고, ADP 3개월 추세 ~0)와 인플레 재가속(트루플레이션 2.5% 상회)이 충돌하는 상황. 프라이빗 크레딧 우려(블랙록 Renovo 대출 100→0 평가, JP모건의 Tricolor 창고대출 회수)도 언급. 결론으로 진행자는 부채, 특히 마진대출 축소를 최우선으로 권고.
다듬은 글
Well, this morning we have a lot to break down, including updates on the new $2,000 stimulus dividend payments from Donald Trump, Bassin sending confusing signals about it, but then Trump reiterating that, along with what's the Fed trying to tell us about the economy, and you'll be shocked with how much certainty they're telling us what's actually going on in the economy.
Then we'll also break down what's going on in private credit because we just saw a nice big fat BlackRock write-down on those Renovo home project loans, and so we'll talk about that. We broke down their complete collapse just a couple weeks ago following the First Brands and Tricolor collapse. All of it telling us at least something about what's going on in the economy.
Let's start here. So Donald Trump just truthed the following. That all the money left over from the $2,000 payments made to low and middle-income US citizens from the massive tariff revenue pouring into the country from foreign countries will be substantial and will be used to substantially pay down the national debt.
Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump. Okay. Now, why is he doing this? Well, one of the reasons he's doing this is because the Wall Street Journal editorial board just lambasted Donald Trump's plan yesterday evening. So yesterday evening, the Wall Street Journal editorial board basically said that Donald Trump was looking for a Hail Mary to gain popularity again, going as far as calling people fools who are against tariffs, and saying that we're going to pay down the national debt.
Wall Street Journal editorial board says that this is a logical fallacy to argue that you could both pay down the national debt and issue stimulus checks when we're literally running an annual federal budget deficit of $1.8 trillion per year. So no like if you just spend one extra dime, you're just deficit spending.
Because we are literally increasing our debt by $1.8 trillion per year. So the only way you could pay down the debt is if you just essentially take 100% of tariff revenue and apply it to the debt, and you're still growing the debt because we have such an unbalanced budget in the government. And then of course the Wall Street Journal goes as far as saying, "Hey, like if people are so happy about tariffs and everybody loves tariffs then do we really need a tariff dividend check to be happy about tariffs?" And I think the Wall Street Journal is going a little off the rails here because in fairness people are suffering.
Like grocery prices, rent prices, energy prices, home electricity prices, all this stuff is through the roof. And that's what people are frustrated about, and people are looking for relief, so I don't think that the idea here is that maybe people don't like tariffs, and therefore they need to be coaxed into liking tariffs with a check.
I think people are like, "Yo, I'm pissed. I'm struggling out here, and I need a little bit of help." That said, the Wall Street Journal does have a fair point saying that we got a lot of debt. We're not paying down the debt and doing stimulus checks. So Donald Trump announces these $2,000 stimulus dividend or tariff dividend checks.
Wall Street Journal bags on him. At the same time, Scott Bassin is like, "Well, you know, you can measure that $2,000 in many different ways. It doesn't actually have to be a check." Which is this clip here. You know, it could the the $2,000 dividend could come in lots of forms and lots of ways, George.
Um you know, it could be just the the tax decreases that we are seeing on the president's agenda. You know, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on social security deductibility of auto loans. So, you know, those are substantial deductions that, you know, are being financed in the tax bill. So that then turned around and pissed a lot of people off because people are like, "Wait, are you like lying to us?
Like on one hand you're like, 'Hey, we're going to send these $2,000 checks.' Then the Wall Street Journal bags on you. Then all of a sudden Scott Bassin walks back to the idea of $2,000 checks. And then all of a sudden Trump is like "That's all wrong. We're definitely going to take the $2,000 payments and send them to citizens.
And we're going to pay off the debt." Again, the Wall Street Journal still has a point because we're in such a deficit hole that we're definitely not going to be paying off any debt. We're still going to be adding to the debt by paying the checks. But Donald Trump at the very least is doubling down on making the payments.
In addition to Trump doubling down on making $2,000 payments he's also now promising or that he wants to recommend a bonus of $10,000 per person like air traffic controller who did not take time off during the government shutdown. Because obviously when people stop getting paid, they get told like, "Hey, like you're not getting paid.
You know, you're supposed to show up to work, but if you don't like I don't fault you." But then there are some people who are like, "No, man, you know, my mission is showing up every day and trying to keep America operating." And they show up to work, and Trump is like, "Hey, we want to reward those people." Now, one of the reasons Donald Trump is doing this sort of like, "Hey, let me throw cash at people." Whether it's $2,000 to low and middle-income individuals and throw money at air traffic controllers who are working for their living every single day is probably because of what The Economist says.
The Economist just did this great breakdown of four groups that used to support Donald Trump that are all all of a sudden lacking based on the last election. Those are Arab Americans Hispanic Americans younger Americans and women. So these are groups that were all voting for Donald Trump when he was running against Kamala Harris.
But now all of a sudden you're seeing these minority communities and these other groups tilting back towards Democrats, and those margins are getting flipped towards the Democratic side. See, both count and they they they go granular here, and I'm going to give you the summary of it. But basically they go very granularly say counties with large Hispanic populations were groups that Trump previously wooed, but that's now being flipped over.
Right? So now all of a sudden what you have is Trump a little bit freaking out going, "Hey, you know, we need rate cuts at the Fed and we need to really help out the people that we're now losing, so let's offer them money before midterms so we don't get shellacked in midterms." The problem of course with this is at the same time as Trump is hoping for this you also have a Federal Reserve that's extremely confused with what the hell they want to do.
And it a lot relates to what Academy Securities is talking about regarding interest rate hikes. And this is quite interesting. So Academy Securities put out a piece, and they argue that look if we actually looked at 2021 and 2022 when we were printing stimulus checks we saw trueflation skyrocket. The problem with trueflation skyrocketing is it's an underused guide for what's happening with inflation because the Fed likes to use CPI.
But CPI lags massively. So what a surprise we were about a year late on inflation because it lagged massively when the Fed uses CPI as a core component of PCE, which is their preferred gauge. And then all of a sudden the Fed's late to raise rates. If they listened to trueflation, no problem. Well, what's happening with trueflation now is we're slowly starting to see a little bit of an uptick.
In fact, the writer here at Academy Securities says trueflation is creeping back above 2.5%. Now that extra 0.5% may be entirely because of tariffs, so it could be Trump's own doing. But here you've got Academy Securities warning that we've got to be worried about inflation going back up. And there's actually an argument for higher yields instead of lower yields in the near term.
Now of course there's plenty of data suggesting that the economy is weakening, but this is where you're getting this debate at a really like a really sensitive time for the economy between Fed officials. And it's creating a lot of problems. And I got to break down what some of those problems look like, and then I want to break down what the Fed is saying here because you could see the confusion.
But understand the problems here. So on on one hand so these are going to be like you know, negative supports. Okay? Negative supports are tariffs because obviously they're going to at least create a risk of perpetual inflation. They create as we hear it's one-time inflation. One-time inflation effects though, one-time inflation effects can create perpetual perpetual inflation threats.
So therefore tariffs hurt. But also a negative support for cutting rates, so I'll say for cutting. Another negative support for cutting is issuing a $2,000 stimulus check. Right? Those won't actually encourage the Federal Reserve to cut because they're both going to be inflationary issues. But at the same time positive supports for cutting are obviously what we're seeing in the highest layoffs layoff announcements year to date and in in Q4 and in Q4 in you know, over what?
15 years. Right? Going back to the the Great Recession. Which isn't great. So layoffs aren't doing very well. The ADP three-month trend is basically zero for job gains. We have job cut announcements job cut announcements like to come. Right? To be like job cut announcement plans they're called. Job cut plans.
Plan announcements. There we go. Plan announcements. Those are the highest since 2008. That's not good either. Right? Because it's not just the layoffs that have been announced, but the fact that companies are saying, "Yeah, we're planning to announce layoffs." You know, in the last ADP report, we saw those were at 450 announcements.
That's the highest level of announcements that we've seen, especially going into the holiday season in quite a while. So, these are positive supports for cutting in addition to what we're seeing with, you know, the K-shaped recovery, right? So, K-shaped recovery of stock investors and wealthy investors doing well with spending.
But, the problem is that doing well with spending isn't ubiquitously felt for everybody. That's why so many people are clamoring for some form of relief, like a $2,000 stimulus check. It makes sense. But, look at what the Fed or or here, let me tell you what the Federal Reserve talked about today, and this is where you're getting this division.
On one hand, you've got uh Mr. Moswell, who is saying that, "Hey, rate cuts that we've made were insurance for the labor market, and we're going to see a boom in the first quarter of 2026 because you're going to see a combination of rate cuts, deregulation, and the the government spending money again as the government reopens.
The labor market's been cooling down, but it's all orderly. Everything's fine." So, you've you literally got one guy at the Fed going, "Hey guys, everything's fine. Like, it's good. We're going to go back to the moon next year." Which is great. A lot of people, especially in the stock market, want to hear that because you want to keep making money.
And you have other people at the Fed like this as well, like Schmed, who's like, "Dude, we don't even need to rate cut rates anymore." This is why a rate cut in December is basically a coin toss right now. It's sitting at 63% 63% odds of a rate cut in December is like, "We don't know. We're 50/50 on whether we're going to get a rate cut or not." Daily this morning spoke.
She says, "The tariff effects so far have been contained to goods." Okay. Well, remember how I said that risk of perpetual inflation? The risk of perpetual inflation is as soon as the tariff effects get uncontained from goods. That's why she's saying it cuz she's like, "Hey, so far we're good. Hopefully, it stays that way." As soon as it spills over, you got a problem.
It's hard to put the inflation genie back in the bottle, as people say. So, this is why people are like, "I don't know. Should we be cutting right now?" And then, of course, you get Myron. Myron's like, "Hey, Fed policy really lags." Now, this is the Trump shill, but he's also pretty good. I like him.
So, he says, "If you look at financial conditions in private credit and housing, you have a whole host of issues that suggest we should be cutting, maybe even 50 basis points in December, at minimum 25. The labor market data we have so far is stale, but everything we have so far is saying we should be cutting.
And yeah, of course, is there a risk of overstimulating in 12 to 18 months? His argument is, "Listen, if you're making policy using today's data, you're looking backwards 12 to 18 months. You got to make policy based on where we're going. And the trend is falling employment, softer ADP, higher layoffs, and more layoff announcements coming.
That is the trend." He's right about that. So, it probably makes sense for the Federal Reserve to cut, but the problem is Donald Trump is kind of shooting this potential for rate cuts in his own foot. Like, Trump wants the rate cuts, but tariffs make rate cuts harder because they create this uncertainty around perpetual inflation.
Uh and then, of course, stimulus checks also create a risk of substantially more inflation, which again then says, "Well, maybe the Fed shouldn't cut." So, Trump's policies don't really align with encouraging the Fed to cut, even though Donald Trump is demanding the Fed cut. Now, Myron also talks about private credit, which is a big deal.
I mean, BlackRock, listen to this. This is crazy. A month ago, BlackRock deemed the private credit it had extended to Renovo Home Partners, a struggling home improvement company, to be worth 100 cents on the dollar. As of last week, the firm had a new assessment. It's actually worth zero. I mean, this is literally like the South Park meme, where you go into the bank and you go, "Hey man, how much my my how much is my $100 worth right now?" "$100." And then, "It's gone." "What do you mean it's gone?" "It's gone." "All of it." "It's gone." "In fact, you can't even sit here anymore because this seat is only for customers of the bank, and because you don't have any money, you're not a customer anymore, so leave." That's scary.
Now, then again, I'm a little bit skeptical on how bad this private private credit issue really is because it turns out that you remember the whole Tricolor collapse that we covered on the channel? You know, they were giving loans to undocumented immigrants in Texas, and this was probably not a surprise that when the border got shut down and and, you know, new loans dried up and other people were getting deported, it's probably not a surprise that all of a sudden Tricolor went bankrupt.
Well, apparently, they were actually sort of they flagged by this company called Waterfall Asset Management. And what's interesting is if Waterfall Asset Management reported them, and they just took on another 750 million pounds uh of of funding, basically, bringing the new total of funding to 3 billion pounds.
It doesn't seem like they're actually terribly worried about private credit. But then, what did they do to Tricolor? Well, what happened was Waterfall Asset Management, per Bloomberg. Per Bloomberg, Waterfall Asset Management actually called up JP Morgan and said, "Hey, we think something sus is going on over here at Tricolor." JP Morgan then calls them up, the CEO, and then very rapidly rug pulls their warehouse line of credit, and then, what what a surprise, the company collapses.
So, it's really interesting because like, what we heard, right? So, we heard Tricolor collapsed. Jamie Diamond says there are cockroaches. Uh you know, and then and then all of a sudden, Renovo collapses. Oh my gosh, Jamie must be right. Right? That's that's what we heard. That's what we were told like in the in the public.
The you know, us us peasants in the public compared to the suits who have all the insights. But, what actually happened, which is so interesting because it's sort of like expectation versus reality. But anyway, what actually happened is you actually saw Tricolor gets uh thrown under the bus by Waterfall, who's borrowing like crazy in private credit.
You know, so it's like they haven't slowed down at all. They just throw Tricolor under the bus. JP Morgan rug pulls the Tricolor uh warehouse line of credit. This is why I've been warning, like, you got to be careful with these big banks, right? Like, they they will rug pull you and not even care. Uh and then, you know, we we see uh Jamie Diamond, you know, come out about cockroaches.
But, he's actually part of the reason that this Tricolor collapse happened because, sure, like, either is possible, right? It's possible Tricolor was a fraud, or it's possible they got thrown under the bus. Maybe they weren't a fraud, and JP Morgan just got a little, you know, scared for whatever reason and just rug pulled them.
It kind of makes you nervous about having having debt with JP Morgan. Now, it's funny. I was mentioning thin the Alpha report, but, you know, people make this quote or or circulate this quote on uh mostly on X and stuff like that. They say things like this, "If you borrow $100 million or sorry, if if you borrow if you borrow, you know, $500,000, let's call it, the bank owns you." Right?
People make this quote all the time. And then, they say, "If you borrow $100 million, you own the bank." And then, I follow this up and go, "Uh no." When JP Morgan has over $1.4 trillion in assets, $100 million is literally like you having $250,000 in a bank account, and your child asks you for $17.85 for their book club.
In other words, JP Morgan doesn't give a flying crap about your $100 million. It's pennies to them. So, JP Morgan will be more than happy to rug pull you, whether or not any of the allegations are founded or not. So, it kind of makes me wonder, like, is there really a private credit issue, or is this just JP Morgan being the jerks that JP Morgan is?
They go around rug pull people. I don't know. The lesson to me is you got to be really cautious trusting the big the big banks because they can rug pull you at any time. I don't think we hate the big banks enough. Now, don't get me wrong. I do think there are risks with these private credit rating agencies.
You know, Financial Times has this whole piece today about like this growing risk of Morningstar or Kroll or HR Ratings or Egan and Jones. Basically, these companies issuing private credit rate letters that are not publicly disclosed, and it's like, "Hey, they could all be bad." I agree. They could all be bad because you have to understand how private credit really works.
Like, these ratings. If you go shop them up, and you go call them and go, "Hey, we're looking to get a you know, a rating on this pile of basically. Uh we're looking to get a rating on this. You know, how much are you going to charge? How much are you going to charge? How much are you going to charge?" Like, on the phone, some of these companies are going to be like, "Hey man, we might be a little more expensive, but but we'll get you that AAA." You know, like, we don't know that's happening for sure, but we could guess that's happening because these rating agencies, they don't really care if the loans go bad cuz it'll just be like a whole systemic shock and crisis and how could anybody have known whatever.
They want their money now, baby. So, if you try to put all of this together, you're in a really teeter-totter position in the economy. This is why, you know, if you go to meetkevin.com/data, this is free, okay? You go to meetkevin.com/data, I put the um uh uh bear bull scale. And so, I update this every so often.
It's by the way also where you can sign up if you want for the totally free daily wealth email. If you put your email in here, we'll send you that daily wealth email all the time. I also have the taco scale for Trump, you know, always chickens out score. But anyway, which has been very supportive for the market so far.
But I mean, like if you put all of this together, it's really hard to say, "Oh, we should be 10 out of 10 bullish." And it's also really hard to say we should be one out of 10 bearish, right? Because think about it. You have You have true evidence that says, "Yeah, there are really actually inflationary effects in the economy." You know, stimulus checks are inflationary.
Tariffs are at least short-term inflationary. And those could become perpetual inflationary issues. Okay? Then on the flip side, you got all this jobs data that basically says our jobs market is utterly collapsing and the consumer is completely destroyed. You know, but then you have people like over at the Fed who are like, "Oh, but financial conditions are are, you know, very very loose.
Like there's this very supportive." But then Myron counters and says, "Yeah, but that's because you're looking at stock valuations which are at all-time highs. So, if you take the peg leg of the stock market away, you got really tight financial conditions." Overnight you could have really tight financial conditions, which is really bad because it, you know, could lead to a lot of pain very rapidly.
So, that's the teeter that you're on. On one hand, you got a really seriously slowing down labor market. You know, pe- people don't pay attention to the as much as they should. But remember what I broke down in that ADP report. The ADP report was above trend. That was fantastic. It was above that three-month trend we wanted.
Nate Tea pointed that out. I've been pointing that out. This is great. The three-month trend stayed positive. The break-even labor report is probably closer to zero to 20. We got 40. That's great. But the concentration was what nobody paid attention to. That it was basically just West Coast. Well, what happens when all of a sudden that West Coast hiring stops?
Now labor falls off a cliff. Then financial conditions tighten at the same time as you have lingering inflation cuz then almost certainly you're going to get your stimulus checks of $2,000 because if the economy goes into recession, Trump's just going to print money. That's going to be his goal. It's going to He's going to print checks.
So, debt's going to go through the roof even more. But stock values then collapse. So, you have this insane uh uh position you're in in the economy right now. And it's so hard to say which way are we going to blow. Like the wind could blow in one direction and that's it. Labor recession or Q1 boom, everything's skyrocketing again and everybody's hiring again.
It's all going to be predicated on hiring again and us not, you know, tipping over. But put all of this together, man, this is a very very very very very bizarre place to be in. And so, it makes sense why people are like, "I I don't know. Are we going to get a rate cut in December or not?" It makes sense why you got half Fed members going, "We want the rate cut." And the other half going, "No, we don't want the rate cut." Cuz nobody freaking knows.
And that's why I like my point of view and my bottom line recommendation, which obviously isn't personalized financial advice for you because I don't know your situation, but my personal my personal bottom line recommendation when you're in this sort of crap environment where we could blow either way, where the bears are right or the bulls are right, the best thing to do in that sort of middle ground is get the hell out of debt.
Cuz as much as you can. Okay? Top priority number one, no margin debt. Get rid of these lines of credit that the banks could rug pull you on. Like imagine this. Imagine you just took out a $500,000 home equity line of credit. You put it all in the stock market. You put it all into Tesla stock at 450.
Okay? Then we get a bad jobs report or whatever. Tesla goes to 200. Now your 500 grand is 250. And then JP Morgan cuz they're scumbags and you should never trust this bank calls you up and goes, "Hey, Guess what? You owe me 500 grand back right now." And you're like, "What are you talking about? It's It's a 10-year home equity line of credit.
And and and, you know, I thought I was able to pay this back over 30 years after it goes into the amortization period." And like, "Yeah, bro. Read the fine print. We could call it at any time." I mean, I don't know if your loan says that, but you just got to be careful. Certainly that's true on margin loans.
So, apparently it's true on on uh um what's it called? These um warehouse lines of credit for businesses. That's exactly what they did to Tricolor and that's why they went BK uh or at least contributed to it. Who knows? Maybe they were a fraud, too. I I don't know. [clears throat] And and then, you know, this is the same thing that when I bought my plane, they tried to do to me.
And I'm like, "Hell no, I'm going to fall for that." See, when I bought my plane, I got a plane loan at another lender that was a 20-year fixed-rate loan, no margin provision. Like you can't margin call it. It's 20-year fixed rate. Make your payment every month, you pay it off. Doesn't matter what the value the asset is.
JP Morgan is like, "Oh, we want an annual right to re-margin." Which means every single year, they can have their own opinion of value and they go, "Yeah, now we want an extra two mill." Out of the blue. And then what? You got to raise money when the stock market is insane. I think JP Morgan just sort of like like rests on their laurels of the name of being whatever, but that's all it takes for the banks to like imagine when the banks start rug pulling more businesses.
Geez, I hope they don't. But that's why I I try to stress that to my audience, to you, whether you're a course member or you're not. Like I appreciate you watching me and I just don't think that people uh uh caution enough how dangerous these margin loans are because all it takes is the DTCC changing collateral requirements and all the broker-dealers, M1 Finance, Robinhood, all of them calling you up and going, "Hey, you know, you used to borrow up to this much on Tesla.
Now you can only borrow a fraction as much." And then you get rug pulled. And that can happen overnight. And it always happens at the worst time. So, that's it. That's it. That's That's my take. Now, hey, you know, we got an update on the checks, but ironically, the checks pressure inflation, which probably gives the Fed even more pause. It's a bizarro environment. I can't handle at .
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