Lyn Alden: The Economy Is Trapped In A Vicious Cycle Of More Debt & Bigger Deficits

Lyn Alden 0:00
Most of the fourth turnings were actually all the fourth turnings basically happening at major long term debt cycle changes as Ray Dalio would refer them to. So that’s that’s the more financial or quantitative background of what happens. And generally, these things tend to feed each feed on each other. So for example, sovereign debt crises can lead to more geopolitical instability and geopolitical instability leads to sovereign debt crises.

Adam Taggart 0:28
Welcome to Wealthion and Wealthion founder Adam Taggart, Buckminster Fuller, the famous architect and systems theorist famously said, You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Today’s guest expert Lyn Alden brings an engineering approach to finance and investing and spends a lot of time looking for better models that we should consider adopting as both a society and as individual investors. Could our markets be designed to become more efficient and fair? are central banks the best way to set monetary policy? And is there a better form of money than the current fiat currencies we use? We’ll dig into all those topics and more today with Lyn. Lyn, thanks so much for joining us.

Lyn Alden 1:16
Thanks for having me. Always happy to be here.

Adam Taggart 1:18
It’s always a pleasure, Lynn, a lot of people have been asking loudly on this channel for your return, you’re gonna make a lot of people happy with today’s discussion. I got a lot of questions for you, including some questions about your brand new book, which I understand is selling really well. Congratulations on that. But before I dive into them, if we could just start at the high level question I like to always kick these discussions with you off with what’s your current assessment of the global economy and financial markets.

Lyn Alden 1:44
So I think the biggest overall set of forces right now is the opposition between obviously the very, the increasingly tight central bank policy, especially from the Fed, as they, you know, they they keep rates high, they reduce their balance sheet being offset by the sheer amount of fiscal stimulus that is happening in the form of basically uncontrolled deficits. And what makes this type of period different than most other periods, except for going back to the 40s, is that, you know, normally like, let’s say, in the 70s, when you raise interest rates, and you have very low public debt levels, the downward force you put on money creation from banks is a lot bigger than the upward force you put on your own government finances, through higher interest expense. And then as you get more and more debt on the public ledger, that interest rate setting mechanism gets less balanced, because now when you raise interest rates, although it does slow down bank lending, and we’re seeing that it also completely explodes the fiscal deficit through higher interest expense, which is a type of stimulus. And if you go all the way to, like, say Japan’s case, it’d be even more extreme. Right? So the more the more public debt you have, the less intuitive that industry channel gets, as a policy tool. So we have these kind of two very competing forces right now. And then of course, the the, the other side of that are, you know, in addition to that, it’s the rising geopolitical conflicts around the world. So while we have these domestic fiscal issues, the US is now strategically financially involved in two warfronts to different degrees. And the way I would phrase it, and I know that, you know, you’ve read the fourth third, and you’re a fan of that book. But basically, to put it in kind of more quantitative metrics is most of the fourth turnings were actually all the fourth turnings basically happening at major long term debt cycle changes, as Ray Dalio would refer them to. So that’s, that’s the more financial or quantitative background of what happens. And generally, these things tend to feed each feed on each other. So for example, sovereign debt crises can lead to more geopolitical instability. And geopolitical instability leads to sovereign debt crises. It’s kind of like when you’re vulnerable, that’s when things are more likely to happen to you, because it’s more opportunity for them to happen. And so that’s that’s kind of the geopolitical stage while we have this fiscal and monetary backdrop.

Adam Taggart 4:11
Okay, great intro, gosh, lots to dig into there. I’ve talked on this channel, LAN about the fact that you’ve got the Fed, and really the banking system jamming on the economic brakes, while at the same time you’ve got the fiscal side of the equation, you have the administration and Congress putting their foots on the on the fiscal accelerator. Right. So that’s pretty much I think, what you started your answer with, you know, keep up keep using the car analogy. You know, you basically can burn out your engine by doing that at the same time. What’s the risk here economically, of doing that?

Lyn Alden 4:49
The risk mainly is that crowding out effect while you have that combination, because basically, someone asked about all these treasuries. It’s currently not the Fed. It’s not the domestic banking so system. And with a strong dollar, it’s not the foreign sector either. There’s an unintuitive relationship there that if the dollar gets too strong, too fast, the foreign sector actually generally stops buying treasuries. And if he gets disorderly, they could actually sell treasuries. Because basically, they’re in currency defense mode. They’re not in reserve accumulation mode, they’re in currency defense mode, and servicing their debts mode. So they what they need is dollars, and they can sell assets to get dollars. And so that risk is that all of this Treasury issues has to be absorbed by the domestic non bank sector, which is households hedge funds, you know, asset managers, pensions, basically different pools of capital. And basically, it’s a liquidity squeeze is pushing downward pressure on the private sector, which in some cases is good, some cases is bad. But the public sector is just completely not sensitive to interest rates. So we don’t know congressmen are gonna make decisions about things based on the Feds current interest rate like a business would. And when we look at these big buckets of spending, there’s, you know, the Social Security, Medicare, military, those those are an interest expense, those are the by far the biggest chunk of the budget. And they’re all unpopular cut. And then now with the geopolitical issues, I mean, even defense is now it’s more likely to go up and down. And so the, and then, you know, basically, there’s no appetite for major tax increases, especially when you have a polarized Congress. So the combination of nothing meaningful is is is easy to cut. And there’s no meaningful way to kind of increase revenue. And so I think these deficits are set to continue. And so we are in that, as you said, that burnout phase, at least while there’s still some pools of liquidity, so we’re burning down reverse repos, that’s coming back into the market that’s like the kind of the final source of liquidity out there. And so basically, we’re in this kind of stall period until kind of existing liquidity is used up.

Adam Taggart 6:56
Okay, and what what happens when that liquidity is used that basically, you know, which of the two pedals do you think is going to sort of win out here in the end.

Lyn Alden 7:05
So I would expect the fiscal two went out many that I think the central bank has to shape itself around fiscal rather than fiscal choices, shaping themselves around the central bank, at the end of the day, those in charge of the fiscal lever can override the monetary lever. And you know, what form that takes in, we’ll see, I mean, this is obviously a complex, ever changing situation. But you know, a good model for this is the 2019 repo spike, which, which in many, basically, the Federal Reserve was doing quantitative tightening, there were an increasing amount of T bills coming to market, there was no longer any reverse repo facility. And hedge funds were big buyers of treasuries, and they were using the repo market to finance themselves. And eventually, they basically all that liquidity got tapped out. And, you know, the repo rate spiked, and then the Fed had to come in, first they provided repo, then they had to stop decreasing their balance sheet, then they started, you know, buying T bills outright. So even though was a repo problem, they had to go and actually fix the T bill oversupply problem. Now, that was politically it was it was complex, because they, their messaging was this is not QA, we’re just buying T bills. And, and, of course, there was, you know, there was officially, you know, not high inflation, so they had some covered, it wasn’t like, necessarily a big issue. It did have market impacts, I think he could see a similar thing, maybe 2024. If they kick it a little further, maybe 2025, I would guess 2024. But we’ll see. And then there might be a thing where the Fed has to stop reducing his balance sheet to basically you have a treasury market go liquid or something kind of like the gilt market last year. And then basically, you’re in fiscal dominance, where the central bank has kind of limited control of its own balance sheet size, because there’s so much fiscal on the market.

Adam Taggart 8:55
Okay. A couple of things real quick, can you just define the term fiscal dominance? I’m not sure every viewer knows what it is. But it’s a true term that has implications in this current environment. Yeah. So

Lyn Alden 9:05
when we think of the 70s, basically, there was monetary dominance, meaning you you would smaller, smaller public deficits, smaller debt levels. And so there’s monetary levers were a lot stronger. When you get the fiscal dominance. There’s a couple of ways of looking at it. But basically, that fiscal is was overriding things monetary policy gets gets less flexible, because they’re, they’re being overridden by basically the large fiscal forces that are play very large, very large public debts, very large public deficits. And so fiscal changes, so like tax increases, stimulus, that kind of thing, and it being far more important for the economy and for financial markets than central bank decisions.

Adam Taggart 9:49
Okay. Let me ask you this. So if the accelerator wins out in this battle, the fiscal accelerator, what impact does that have on inflation? That fence has to eventually take its foot off the brake to at the same time,

Lyn Alden 10:05
I think that would be the risk for a second wave of inflation. So we’ve had, you know, inflation historically often comes in waves, where you you have inflation, then you get under control, but the underlying force is still there. And as soon as you kind of, you know, stop suppressing it, it comes right back, it’s like holding a volleyball underwater, you let go, it comes back up for a second a bounce. And there’s, there’s really kind of, I think, two main ways that can happen. One is some sort of energy supply disruption, which considering how tight the market is, you know, any any given week or month is always possibility, especially given some recent events. And the other one would be basically, if the Fed is no longer able to tighten their balance sheet, despite above target inflation, then basically, the market can lose faith in the Feds credibility, they can have a very kind of different view of how things are gonna turn out. And then we start going, I think, the more Japan route, where even when you’re above target inflation, you’re still doing QA, for lack of a better thing to do. And then I think you especially when you’re in a in an environment, where you’re also running a trade deficit. And you’re in an environment, that’s more of a tight commodity market, which was say, not not 2010s decades. So Japan, a lot of their, you know, central bank balance sheet expansion happened from say, late 2012, to the present, most of that was in a commodity bear market. Whereas if this type of thing happens in a commodity bull market or a tight commodity market tight is, especially a tight energy market, that combination can be quite inflationary and give you the second round of potential inflation.

Adam Taggart 11:43
Okay, so we’ve heard a lot that the Fed is fighting for its credibility here. Right. And that Jerome Powell doesn’t want to become another Arthur burns, right, your drawing, you keep mentioning the seven days as sort of a comparable, somewhat comparable, historical compliment here. It sounds like if, if Powell is really trying not to become Arthur burns, he’s going to be pretty angry, because it seems like Congress and the administration are trying to force him into an Arthur burns type role with this extreme, you know, fiscal spending, right. I mean, basically, I’m sure if Powell had his druthers, he would say, guys cut it out, because you’re gonna make inflation come back. That’s what I’m trying to kill.

Lyn Alden 12:27
Yeah, and I think I mean, what adds complexity here is a lot of what we’re seeing in the fiscal deficit was baked into the cake years and decades ago. And that’s actually that’s one of the big problems with fiat currencies that you can defer problems. And then it’s unclear, basically, the consequence is so far separated from the cause. So right now, for example, in political spheres, you’ll see people arguing that is it Biden’s fault as Trump’s fault, you know that because it’s very, it’s very recently recently focused. But for example, like I mentioned, in my book, The Iraq war is estimated to have I mean, the whole war on terror is estimated to cost like $6 trillion, when you include the war funding the interest expense since then, you know, veterans benefits for the next decades. When they when they kind of extrapolate that out, they get to estimates of like 13 trillion by 2050. And that was before interest rates are where they are now. So that if that if they’re just more structurally elevated, that’d be more trillions. But no one ever kind of sees these current fiscal deficits, and it goes back and thinks 20 years ago, or 40 years ago, based on just demographics and things like that, right. So both from the demographics, entitlement standpoint, and just some of our geopolitical decisions that have accumulated not just not just in the past three years, but in the past, you know, 40 plus years. That’s all removed from their original decisions. And so this, that’s why I kind of view it as there’s not really like, it’s not as though Congress passed a lot of big bills right now. A lot of this is kind of baked into the cake from, you know, during the pandemic era, but then also before then, there’s so much accumulated, and it was kind of like, always going to come like this. And then the question just became, is it pulled forward, which it was because it’s some of these recent, you know, decisions over the past three, three plus years? Or is it going to be pushed away as it maybe could have been, but but wasn’t? So yeah, I think Powell would be annoyed at, you know, the fact that he’s, they’re trying to, you know, tighten overall conditions, but there’s not much they can do about the deficits that are coming out that are stimulatory kind of inflationary, and then potentially make the Feds job a lot harder in terms of being able to control their own monetary and, you know, their interest rate policy and their balance sheet size.

Adam Taggart 14:47
Okay. It’s interesting hearing you talk. You’re kind of giving the the fiscal side of an argument that I’ve heard Rick Rule give quite frequently and in fact, I just interviewed him the other day for a while. Leon’s upcoming conference that’s this coming weekend, folks, don’t forget to go register for that if you haven’t already. But Rick talks a lot about us and Natural Resources investor. And he talks a lot about for a lot of key commodities. We are, even if demand remains constant. In future years, we’re sort of destined to have pretty strong supply shortages of because of decisions to underinvest made 510 1520 years ago. Right. And it’s it’s, that’s been traveling through time and is now catching up with us. Sounds like you’re saying there’s very similar dynamic on the fiscal side of things.

Lyn Alden 15:35
Yeah, a lot of these things come in longer cycles. And like I said, that’s kind of the that’s the main selling point of fiat currency is the ability to separate consequences from the point of decision by a sufficiently long timeline, that it’s because why politicians love it. Yeah. And so that’s, that’s what we find ourselves in right now. And the United States has had the most leeway to do this. And so they’ve done it the most, pretty much, at least among the developed world. And so they are, you know, they’re kind of running these very large deficits as though there’s no consequence for it. And I think, you know, in the in the years ahead, we are going to start seeing more of those consequences.

Adam Taggart 16:12
All right, and it’s probably gonna get one of the reasons why is multifactorial, but one of the reasons why if I intuited correctly, from your earlier answer, at the beginning of the conversation here is that, you know, unlike the 70s, we have much more debt now. Right. So we have a much higher debt burden, which limits our options. And that debt is becoming quickly, much more expensive, right. And so that twin combination here really just it makes a lot less possible. You agree?

Lyn Alden 16:45
I agree. And that’s also why I compare this period to 1940s, a lot more than the 70s, even though the 70s does have some similarities with for example, you know, potentially energy shortages and things like that. But the the source of money creation, and the debt levels are much more like the 1940s, which was the more fiscally dominant environment. And basically, you know, if you sum up, the current predicament is that we spent 40 years getting higher and higher public debt to GDP ratios from the 70s. And then we spent 40 years, you know, started with Volker having downward interest rates. So he got them to that super high level, and we had 40 years of declining interest rates. And so, you know, if you double your debt, but you have your interest rate, your interest expense is still the same. And so that’s kind of overall the rough situation United States has had where the increasing debt burden didn’t really matter, because it’s always offset by falling interest rates. And if you look at when kind of public, like the public Zeitgeist around the debt, so in the late 80s, is when they put in the famous Debt Clock, early 90s, when Ross Perot had like, the most successful independent run, and his whole thing was like the debt deficit. And that that period was still very high interest rates and, and basically rapidly increasing interest expense. And so that was there was kind of like this, like outcry. And but what happened was, you know, when when Soviet Union fell, and China opened up throughout the, you know, the 80s, and especially the 90s, and 2000s. We ushered in this, like 30 year period of globalization. So we brought, you know, Western capital and Eastern labor together, we built all these, you know, facilities throughout Asia, Russia, you know, connected all sorts of increasing energy, cheap energy to Europe, there was like a lot of these disinflationary forces that were really opened up for like a three decade period, and they enabled disinflation falling interest rates, combined, combined with Central Bank decisions, always keep lowering them. And that result was that though the debt concerns were kind of like 30 years early, because they basically what they were, they didn’t assume with interest rates fall all the way to zero, and then stay there for a while, and make that debt servicing costs more manageable. The problem now is that when you when he after you’ve exhausted those 40 years of declining industry, it’s you you go to zero for a while he bounced off zero. Now, we still have the debts of deficits that are rising, while we also have now interest expense is not going down. And so that’s where you start to actually get more acute things associated with those fiscal problems, much like it was back in the late 80s, early 90s. Except this time, there’s there’s really there’s limited ability to kind of offset it again.

Adam Taggart 19:36
All right. Well, so obviously, we’re sort of increasingly entering this, this box canyon, probably both monetarily and fiscally begs the question, you know, what can we do, if anything to get out of it? Let me let me ask you a few more questions. And then we’ll we’ll dig into that main one. That question I just mentioned there Um, I guess first off, just to get your full perspective on the table here for folks, what are your thoughts on on what has just happened? The import of what has just happened in the Middle East? Both societally and for the global economy? How big of a risk factor do you currently think it is? And I just want to note, you’re not a geopolitical analyst, not trying to put that burden on your shoulders. You do spend some time over, you know, near that area at times. So you know, you’ve got a bit of a more boots on the ground informed perspective than the average American so very curious to hear what you think.

Lyn Alden 20:42
Yeah, like you said, I’m not I’m not a geopolitical expert. You know, I cover this mainly from a monetary standpoint and energy standpoint. And then yeah, personally, my husband, I go to Egypt every year, that’s our second home. We have family and friends there. And so even right now, I have family that’s, you know, about 250 miles away from what’s happening there. And of course, they’re, you know, Egypt shares a border with Gaza. They’re very tied into what’s happening there culturally. And, you know,

Adam Taggart 21:10
it’d be taking it a bunch of refugees soon. I think that’s trying to be worked out right now. Yeah,

Lyn Alden 21:14
we’re gonna see what happens there. And that’s, that’s while Egypt is having its own currency crisis, essentially, it’s got a ton of external debt. It’s currently going through an IMF restructuring. And, and they’ve got 30, like 38%, official inflation, somewhere around that, that ballpark. And they might have to do another currency devaluation going forward. They’ve been, they’ve been kind of doing their best to kind of keep that currency pegged for the past year. And so they have a lot of their own internal issues that they’re working through, and now they have this on their doorstep. You know, in terms of broader geo geopolitical significance, I mean, this, this, this attack, Mark was the 50th anniversary of of the start of the Yom Kippur War. That’s also associated with the energy shortages we had in the 70s. And so this is obviously a there’s a lot of potential here for a problem. But it’s, you know, these things, there’s a lot of outcomes that are hard to predict. I mean, basically, from an oil price perspective, whatever probability there was of an oil disruption before this happened versus now that probability is higher. Now. It’s hard to say what what, what that probability is, but it’s whatever it was two weeks ago, it’s higher now. We hope that cooler heads prevail, and that this doesn’t escalate beyond its own borders. It’s already a humanitarian issue enough, let alone if it were to become a more geopolitical thing when you have more countries involved or contributing to energy crises, because, you know, certain suppliers had been been damaged or something. Right. So that’s, that’s the scope of how this can go. But I think also the issues that ties in our prior point that as America kind of runs into these fiscal problems has been hollowed out, the public is increasingly polarized, less interested in the rest of the world. So as we kind of pull back that ushers in a more multipolar world. And so like I said, now the United States is involved in, you know, indirectly, really into into warfronts. We also never know what’s going to happen with Taiwan, really, and things tend to kind of feed on themselves. But, you know, hopefully nothing happens there. And so I think that basically, we just have to expect that most geopolitical things are probably going to surprise to the upside in the years or decade ahead. And that there’s, there’s in some sense, more things that can go wrong than right, while you’re in the midst of, you know, reshuffling of, you know, global alliances global capital access, that kind of thing. And so I don’t really have a firm view on what’s going to happen there. I hope, I hope not much happens there more than what’s already happening. But but we have to wait and see. And you know, I’ve been bullish on energy for a while now. And this type of thing only adds to it. I mean, that, you know, wouldn’t change too much from where I was two weeks ago. But these things just keep adding up to the risk of energy security in the years and decades ahead, that both has investing implications in just humanitarian implications if we do have energy security issues, energy spikes, real people around the world, especially in developing countries suffer from that.

Adam Taggart 24:31
Good answer, and let me just let me just end with this because I feel like I’m going to be asking this question a lot this week. As the risk premium for the global economy, just raised as a result of this.

Lyn Alden 24:45
Yeah, I think all else being equal, there’s there’s more risks than there was, you know, this has that, obviously, that this is nothing particularly new. I mean, these these events are escalated compared to other things that have happened before. So you know, I don’t think many Vestas should go out and just radically changed their investing profile. Because of this. You know, from my standpoint, this type of risk is already assumed some extent, which is why I’m why I’m bullish some of the things I am, why I’m there some of the things

Adam Taggart 25:14
that have a validation of some of your existing positioning

Lyn Alden 25:17
in a bad way. Sure, but I think it yeah, basically, whatever whatever geopolitical concerns there were before are now are now elevated by some amount that, you know, it’s hard to quantify that that’s what markets are for. We’re seeing that kind of priced, you know, over time.

Adam Taggart 25:32
Okay. All right. Well, look, I want to get back to this rising risk premium. So we’ve seen bond yields, surged pretty dramatically over the past couple of months. And interestingly, you know, equities, you know, they’re still doing pretty well for the year. Right? It seems to be a tale of, of two assets or two assets, telling two different stories, if you will, it seems that bonds seem to be telling a much greater story of worry than stocks are right now. And I’m curious, do you have an opinion on which side is sort of seeing things more clearly?

Lyn Alden 26:14
So I think one way I’d phrase it, I would view less is worry and more as a mechanical issue, basically just too much supply relative to the types of demand that they can absorb it in the treasury market. And so it’s not necessarily that a lot of treasury investors are saying, these prices aren’t good. It’s that they’re saying I lose, don’t have the balance sheet capacity to absorb this firehose of treasuries. And the strong dollar just kind of mechanically brings the foreign sector out of the Treasury market purchase period for a while. So even though some of them say might want to cumulate, treasuries, this is not the environment where they’re easily able to do. So. Banks can’t and then the Feds choosing not to because they have their mandates that they’re trying to follow. So a lot of this is just mechanical. I have been I have been somewhat surprised by the resiliency of the stock market this year. You know, on one hand, it’s not surprising in the sense that I’ve been in the camp that things like stock market and real estate in aggregate are going to be this choppy sideways range for a while. So I was not one of those people predicting a big crash, not one of those people predicting like a melt up. My view was generally in that that choppy, nominal range, which is not good for, you know, year after year of real returns. And so this has been in line with that in the sense that we had a dip, we had a rebound. We’re not at all time highs. And so that that plays out. But when I had made that prediction of choppy markets, if I had also known that treasuries would have gotten this higher yield, than I would have assumed that some of these big growth stocks would would have their multiples compressed more than they have now. So I’m a little bit surprised by the resiliency of the equity market. I’ve been a bond bearer since like 2019. And the severity of this bond bear market has been surprising to me, as a bond bear like I was not bearish enough on on bonds. And so I do think there’s a little bit of a disconnect. It kind of reminds me of like, February 2020, when commodity markets and other markets were sensing the issues that were building in February 2020, you know, like in China, and things like that, and the equity market was completely in lala land and then eventually just went straight down. Like it was just like a comical once once, once you realize that all that stuff is kind of coming to our shores, equity market goes straight down. I don’t necessarily know I’m not talking anything that extreme. But it does feel like there’s that disconnect, where equities don’t care until they till they do.

Adam Taggart 28:52
Okay, until they’re forced to. Alright, so on the blind side, just to repeat, it sounds like you’re saying it’s not an emote, you don’t see this as an emotional driven response by bond investors, you see it more as a mathematically driven one. And you’ve mentioned the supply and the flood of treasuries. How much of that is due to the Treasury refilling the TGA? And the reason why I really want to put a spotlight on this question is the last time I had you on, you said, hey, they’re kind of stimulating the economy in a stealth way by draining the TGA down the Treasury general account. And at some point, that’s going to have to be refilled. And that is going to push a whole supply of new treasuries into the market. So you actually called what’s going on right now?

Lyn Alden 29:42
Well, so I’ll avoid doing that. Like kind of victory lap because it’s it has been pushed back a little bit. But so that so one thing that one thing that the Treasury did well, is that so I was concerned that there could have been a more acute liquidity issue this summer based on how they choose used to refill their TGA. And that part didn’t materialize in the sense that they they mostly focus on T bills to refill the initial burst of it, which was kind of the most dangerous part of it. Like when you go from zero to like 400 billion. they navigated that. And that was one of the factors I said they could they could do if they want to avoid a liquidity issue. So basically, when the Treasury issued securities, they have all these different mandates, what they’re trying to optimize for, they want to lower costs for the government, but they also want to ensure good functioning of the Treasury market. And so they basically chose to issue more on the expensive side of the curve, which was the short side, in exchange for that’s a better liquidity situation, because that can come out of the reverse repo. And that’s exactly what happened. Basically, as the TGA is filled up, the reverse repo facilities come down. And so they’ve they’ve kept liquidity pretty flat since the march banking crisis. So like reserves not being drained anymore, or not being refilled either of like bank reserves. Basically, it’s you’ve had this kind of like seesaw, we’re kind of seeing the second phase of it now, in the sense that now they’re back to coupon issuance. And so this starts look more like how it could have looked, had they not done that initial burst of tea Bill filling this is so basically they they they avoided kind of the first few months or problem. And now they’ve they’ve kind of run into that now, it’s still not acute enough, like there’s no seizing up in the treasury market. You know, there was there’s been elevated move index. But there’s there’s not quite acute signs, you know, the Treasury market became very kind of illiquid back in autumn of last year, around the same time, right before the gilt market blew up. I would say most signs are showing that the even though the yields are worse, the Treasury market is not quite as problematic, as was back then. But it’s directionally been in that, that general direction. So you know, this is kind of an ongoing issue. And one thing I wrote actually wrote a newsletter called Treasury market dissonance back in August 2020. That’s best back when yields were almost zero on the long end. Yeah, a different world. And one thing I, the reason I called it is because I started to see a supply issue forming back then. And so it’s obviously been a big zigzag to get there. But that was kind of the top of the bond market. And it’s only been this like shocking, shocking fall and bond prices, shocking increase in yields. And that’s, that’s unusual for investors, because when you look back at the 2010 decade, one of the unintuitive things is that when the Fed was doing QE bond yields often rose. So it’s they start buying bonds. And instead of driving those bond prices down the bond prices, you know, instead of driving them up, so bonds up yields down, actually reverse happened. But that’s often because the private sector would then rotate into more risk assets, basically, a liquidity injection was seen as a risk on environment. But that started to change started, kind of, arguably, with the repo spike. But then especially during the march 2020, sell off, where we started to see more positive correlation, where the Fed buying does actively suppress bond yields. And when they stopped buying, those bond yields push up. And so we are in this this new regime. And so that kind of observation has been confirmed over the past few years, compared to what the 2010s were like. So and in some cases, this is a more intuitive regime, because it kind of works as you’d expect it to, rather than the reverse of how you’d expect it to.

Adam Taggart 33:35
Okay, so there are there are a fair amount of people that are looking at the bond market right now and saying yields are really high. bond market is looking like it’s going to have its third consecutive year of losses, treasury bond market, which has never happened in US market history. And, you know, as long as the Fed remains higher for longer here, at some point, the odds of something breaking, right and requiring the Fed to step in and rescue grow. Right. So there’s, there’s sort of a whole bunch of factors where people are saying, Okay, I don’t think we’re that far away from, you know, in an environment where bond yields could start coming down for a variety of reasons. But of course, if something breaks, and the Fed has to step in, they are expecting that, you know, the Fed would step in and buy bonds, and then that would immediately send bond prices up and yields down. Maybe you feel that way. Maybe you feel Yep, we’ve come into this more intuitive error era where if that indeed happens, that would be the expected result. But I’m curious, what would you say to those bond investors who are sort of looking at bonds right now saying, hey, this might be a really great bond buying opportunity. And not everybody thinks that way. But I’ve certainly interviewed some people who think this was one of the best times to be buying long duration treasuries of their career.

Lyn Alden 34:54
So I mean, after such oversold levels, I can see why there’s a lot of interest in bonds, so I’m less bearish. on bonds now than I was like, you know, a few years ago, back when you wrote that 2020 article? Yeah. And so there there are, I mean, there are more interesting opportunities around in the bond market. Because I have a, a more inflationary view of energy. And because I’m still concerned about the ongoing supply demand, characteristics of the bond market, I personally not really rushing into, for example, go long bonds. I think the most interesting area of the mark is probably tips. You know, I do think that from a real yield perspective, there’s some opportunities there. So you might say, Well, I’m not necessarily bullish on nominal bond prices. But you could be but I could I can make the bullish case for why real yields probably are not going to go much higher? Or if they do, yeah, if they do, maybe that’s a second tranche you buy a little bit more, but that they’re not going to structured to keep going up. Because that’s, that’s how things break. So I do think from a real yields perspective, like a tips perspective, I think there’s some opportunities when you get into the nominal territory, I mean, I’m sure there’s, there’s tradable opportunities, but it’s not exactly a market I would rush into to get involved with. And I do think that we’re in that more intuitive regime. And we already saw that, you know, when when there was a banking crisis, the Fed did jump in to kind of put out fires where they could, and, you know, what they’re not going to do is, is if inflation above target and the equity market falls, 10, or 20%, that’s, that’s not going to cause the Fed to do anything. If a bunch of real estate developers go bankrupt, the Feds not going to do anything. It’s only if basically something like the Treasury market or something very adjacent to it has a problem. You know, banking, Treasury market, that kind of thing is where they jump in things where you can actually get contagion pretty quickly. Or to if you if you do get like outright recessionary conditions, then you probably have a repeat over again. So I don’t think that people should expect the Fed to rush to the rescue. And I also think that they, when they do have to rescue, they would do the minimum that they can to kind of put the fire out, but inflation is still the problem, they’re going to still want to be tied around the margins where they can be, which is not necessarily as good for asset prices, as if they just throw the like a liquidity bazooka at the problem.

Adam Taggart 37:17
Right, right. got so many great questions. I’m looking at the time here, I hope I can get through most of these. So talking to alpaca tlo, relatively recently, he has a very similar perspective, I believe is Yulin. And he’s basically said, Look, if Feds playing for its credibility here, it is going to do whatever it can to either get inflation down to 2% or lower right, and be able to say, Okay, everybody did what we said we were going to do, or only pivot, essentially, when the world comes to it on bended knee, right, when when there’s something super systemically important breaking like the Treasury market, or the banking system, and the world comes and says fed, we know you’re trying to get inflation under control. We think that’s a noble goal. But this problem is bigger, please, please pivot now. Sounds like you’re saying sort of as you have sort of a similar expectation where they’re, they’re not going to be, you know, a glass jaw at the first sign of trouble that they’re going to start intervening again there. So basically, predict or warning was, folks be like, there’s decent probability the markets, probably going to take some pain at some point here in the future, because the Feds not going to come to the rescue until the 11th hour, do you feel the same?

Lyn Alden 38:32
That’s way to look at and I also think you have to counterbalance that with how much fiscal is happening. So I’m not like, uniformly bearish, I’m more selective with the risks I want to take in this in this market. And, you know, I mean, the Feds been very interesting. I mean, if I can, you know, I’ve, I’ve gotten a number of calls, right, in the recent years, like calling for inflation, you know, being bearish on bonds, that kind of thing. The the thing that was somewhat surprising to me that I, you know, if I go back a few years, I would not consider be correct, is that I did not expect the Fed to be as hawkish as they have been. I thought they would use kind of the COVID era as more of a excuse to not raise interest rates, despite high inflation. I thought they were trying to push that

Adam Taggart 39:16
longer. Perfect. Get Out of Jail Free card. I

Lyn Alden 39:18
don’t know why use it. Yeah, because they’re basically the environment. And that’s why I started the four years a lot where they’re in a situation where in the long arc of time, they’re gonna be more like Japan in the sense that they’re just, they just kind of run out of room to do what they want with interest rates and balance sheet, despite being even when they’re above their inflation target. And that that was an environment where they could have turned to that, and I assumed that they would have, but, you know, because of who’s running it, they were they were more hawkish than I thought. So even though inflation in bonds kind of went the way I thought, you know, we’ve had a firmer dollar than I would have guessed, and and, you know, a more destabilized banking system and we are gold prices than I would have guessed, you know, at the same time, say three years ago. So it’s directly playing out a lot. Like I thought with it with a couple main caveats. And that’s why it’s important to kind of respond with new information as we get it. And so it’s clear that the Fed is going to try to push things as much as they can, because it is a credibility issue. And I think they should be applauded for that they’re a bit, you know, it’s kind of like, they’re proving that it’s not necessarily on them right now that they’re, they’re going to try all their tools to be hawkish, and only if the fiscal basically forces them otherwise. That’s when I think that they would have an issue. Until then I think, I think they’re gonna try to keep, you know, keep a lid on inflation, try to get it back down to 2%. up to and including causing some degree of recession up to including basically just just, you know, letting most things have problems other than like the Treasury market.

Adam Taggart 40:56
So did I hear you correctly, though, and regardless of if the Fed does exactly that, that it’s going to be somewhat of a Pyrrhic effort. Meaning, you know, what’s going to matter more at the end of the day is what’s happening on the fiscal side, which is essentially going counter to what the Fed is trying to do.

Lyn Alden 41:15
Yeah, I think that’s how that’s how I read the situation. And I think I think the, the basically the reader kind of feel bad for Powell in a certain way, in a certain way. I mean, he inherited a lot of this. I think, instead of going down as Arthur burns, he can go down as the one that tried his best to push back against the unstoppable object and fiscal. I think that’s, that’s kind of this. That’s the safe. That’s the outcome that’s like most workable here. And I think that’s that’s kind of what that’s what I think it’s what we’re seeing play out.

Adam Taggart 41:46
Okay, gosh, it’s feels strange to have the words let’s have some sympathy for, for the Fed come out of my mouth. But I think it’s very important that you’re unstoppable for the juggernaut of of fiscal dominance may be the thing that really matters here in the long run very quickly. Just to get back to bonds for a second, a big part of what’s driving the factor right now you’re saying is the math of sort of this simple supply math and trying to avoid saying oversupply math, but if you think it’s oversupply, please say that? How long do you think that wall of the supply glut will last? Are we talking months, a quarter or two? Or is this a kind of a years long thing we should be looking at?

Lyn Alden 42:36
So I guess I would I was used, I would use the term oversupply. If something acutely breaks, until then, it’s just a lot of supply. And the supply is essentially endless. I mean, this, like I said, the deficits are structural for years and decades. It’s almost written in stone at this point, there’s, I’d be very surprised if there’s some sort of grand bargain to arrest the deficits. And then, ironically, even if they did, you know, austerity can prevent you from getting very high debt levels. But it actually is a low success rate when you already have very high debt levels. Because if you have a very financialized economy, and then you you know, rein in the fiscal deficits, you can end up slowing GDP hurting asset prices, and then US tax receipts are so tied to asset prices, that you actually don’t You don’t reduce the deficit nearly as much as you thought you would.

Adam Taggart 43:28
Everything just starts breaking. And yeah. Oh, you get us more stimulus?

Lyn Alden 43:32
Yeah. So I view it as low probability, then get the fiscal under control and any sort of foreseeable future. Sorry to

Adam Taggart 43:39
interrupt. But does that mean like multi trillion deficits are just like here to stay? Like we’re never writing things back in?

Lyn Alden 43:45
I think so. That’s, that’s my, that’s my expectation. Now, obviously, there, there are some things that can influence that, like, if we have recession, the industry angle to that would probably decrease a little bit, but then the tax receipt angle would fall too. And so you might moderate I don’t necessarily think that, you know, we’re going to spiral out of control like yours. I think it’s a long grind. Now, the question is the demand side, are there things that can affect demand? And I do, I mean, basically, if you do see some softness in the US economy, changing expectations of the Feds forward interest rate moves, if you do get that kind of weaker dollar, then the foreign Treasury accumulation, at least around the margins can reoccur. And so basically, there are ways to kind of have a cycle to kind of calm this down for a period of time and go further. So I think the supplies practically endless, the demand is fluctuating based on questions like What is the dollar doing? What is the Fed doing? And those are basically kind of the same question. And I think that’s that’s a cycle to watch going forward is what are some of these demand factors going to be? And then if you do get any sort of energy problem that that feeds into that makes it also hard for the foreign secretary cumulate try injuries. Whereas, you know, if you if a lot of new oil supply were to come to market, even though we don’t really see visibility for that, you know, that can alleviate certain things. And that can make the Feds job a little bit easier. So I think there are some, there are some factors around the margin that affect this, but I think the long term outcome is is kind of written in stone.

Adam Taggart 45:19
Okay, but if you’re looking at the bond market, and, you know, hoping for lower bond yields, what I hear you saying is, that’s probably going to be more dictated by demand than supply.

Lyn Alden 45:32
Yeah, basically, if they can get more out of the equity market and into bonds, which I again, I would not want to, that’d be a challenge for a 6040 portfolio, even though it might be good for the bond side temporarily. Or if if one of these other factors can can give more foreign demand. So you know, I think it’s traders are going to trade. But it’s not exactly a market I want to rush into. Other than that, I do think the tips angles are increasingly interesting at these at these real levels.

Adam Taggart 46:02
Okay. All right. In the remaining time, we have learned, I want to talk about this great new book. So you recently released a book that you wrote, think it released in August, titled broken money, which, as of this morning is still selling really well on Amazon. It’s number one, in banks of the banking category, it’s number two and money in monetary policy. So first off, congratulations.

Lyn Alden 46:27
Thank you, this has been a long journey to get that that book out?

Adam Taggart 46:31
Well, it seems like it because you take a long journey. I mean, you you explore the history of money, you know, from the very beginning. But you look at it, which I found really interesting, which differs from a lot of other books on money that I’ve seen, because you kind of look at it all through the lens of technology. Right? So a couple of questions about the book. But I guess the first one is, why’d you write it? And why release it now of all times?

Lyn Alden 46:58
So I wrote it, I guess for two main reasons. One is, because I’ve written so much research, Nash, I get questions like, you know, you’re gonna write a book, or I think like, Could some of this make a book. Now books are a lot of work. And they’re not really good ROI compared to other things you could be doing, like research wise, investing wise. So my first advice, and I knew this going in, don’t write a book, unless you like, you have to read a book, like a book just wants to come out so much, then you just, that’s, that’s you, that’s your highest calling in that moment. So that’s what happened to me, which is kind of like it wasn’t a decision to write the book. It was like the book kind of materialized in my head and then made the decision. And basically, it’s, it was all written in a year, because I had years of prior, you know, research to draw from. And, you know, basically, it was like a couple key things like, realizing we need a book that’s, you know, kind of the history of money through the lens of changing technology, as you said, it’s not something that’s that’s, you know, widely explored. And also, a couple of main themes are along those lines, like the, how the speed of transactions has changed over time, relative to the speed of settlements, and the implications that has for various power structures, to kind of like analysis or reconciliation between different types of monetary theories, like the credit theory of money versus the commodity theory of money, and a way to kind of tie those together. And then, lastly, exploring why there’s 160 Different fiat currencies. I feel like this is a this is a problem that, from both an investing standpoint, as like an opportunity, and as humanitarian aspect in terms of like, why is money broken? When you look at the fact that there’s 160 different currencies in the world. And you’re, it’s kind of a luck in the draw which one you’re born into, they all have their own local monopolies, most of them have very little acceptance outside of their jurisdiction, and most of them rapidly lose value. So people kind of trapped in these currency bubbles. And it’s kind of like saying, Okay, how did we get to this point, because this is clinically not optimal. I mean, when you have 40, currencies in Africa, and 30, currencies in Latin America, that affects trade, you know, and but then it’s like, well, what other better options option is there? You know, because, you know, gold has a lot of uses of savings asset, but it’s, you know, in order to move it quickly, we have to abstract it in some way, which is, which is how, you know, what we used to do and, and then, or you basically have a central bank, or a country kind of running current system that multiple other currencies us countries use, but then that takes away their autonomy. And so there hasn’t been really good solutions for this. So it’s kind of like, I like the idea of exploring why the setup exists, exploring the problems that causes to people and I draw to some extent, from my experience in Egypt, you know, people living in an environment where year after year, there’s 20%, money supply growth, and what that affects that has, and from their perspective of just this is the currency bubble that they’re in and there’s many I like it. And there’s some that are some that are worse, many that are better. And just I just found that money is a topic that’s not well understood, that could be explored in a detailed but accessible way, in a way that I’ve not really seen other books cover.

Adam Taggart 50:18
All right. And, you know, folks should go read the book, and Lyn will have the link to your book in the description below this video, so folks can go click on it and buy it. But what are some of like the key takeaways you’d like him to leave from having read the book with?

Lyn Alden 50:35
I think, a couple key takeaways are a mental model of thinking about money. So people say is it metal? Is it people say it’s an IOU? Like, what is money? I think one way of thinking of it is money is a ledger. And so you have to be very careful which Ledger’s you choose to trust. So that, you know, basically, that those who control the ledger, if anyone controls it, can dilute you out of it, or can freeze your ability to use it. And so, when you think about money as a ledger, whether it’s a literal ledger, like a central bank currency, or whether it’s nature’s ledger, like gold, or a more inflationary commodity, like copper, for example, you have to pick your ledger carefully. And they have different characteristics. And it’s an interesting exercise to walk through, you know, what ledger Am I using? Who controls it? And what else could I be using. And I think another takeaway is to realize that for a century and a half, we’ve had increasing transaction speeds, compared to the physical world. And so it’s kind of necessitated more and more centralization and abstraction. But that that has also brought with it a lot of the problems we’ve just talked about. Basically, fiat currency inflation, almost like currency barter on a global scale, you know, money is meant to unify transactions, but if there’s 160, different monies, it almost like is failing in that way. And then the last one, like I, I explore kind of the fork ahead for money’s generally going more digital. But that takes different forms. So for example, there’s open source money like Bitcoin, there’s Central Bank, digital currencies, that kind of further the control. And then there’s like hybrids, like stable coins, which are basically ways for, like one country’s currencies or assets to pierce any of those 160 different, you know, financial barriers around currency blocks, and basically give those people more options. And so if you’re, if you’re living in Nigeria, for example, generally what you want is something, you know, your options are real estate in the local area, you don’t want to hold the local currency, the stock market’s not as you know, the capital markets, they are not as developed as you’re gonna get in the US, it’s not like you used to go out and invest in the s&p 500. And so people are stuck in there, not just money silos, but like capital silos, unless they’re wealthy enough to have like foreign accounts and things like that. And one thing that technology can do, if we let it is give people more global competition, more global access to the best assets in the world, rather than be restricted to whatever assets happen to exist in their own jurisdiction. So increases if people want to hold dollars, if people want to hold maybe the s&p 500 If people want to hold Bitcoin, if people want to hold a gold stable coin, you know, these these are ways to, it’s almost like offshore banking for the middle class, is what some of these technologies can do. And so I think a big take right have is that there’s a fork in the road between either more centralization, basically, every first century and a half, we made the system more and more efficient, but more and more centralized. We can either continue that path to CBDCs, which I would advocate against, or there’s the more open path of actually trying to tie these systems together more, make capital more globally portable and accessible in a more open source way.

Adam Taggart 54:03
All right. When I read the introduction for this, this video, when I had that quote from Buckminster Fuller, who really, you know, is saying, if you want to replace the current model that everybody’s using, you can’t just attack it, you’ve got to build a better model and show them what it looks like. Do you have hope? And I think this is a leading question, but do you have hope that some of these digital solutions are indeed presenting the world with better models?

Lyn Alden 54:35
I do. I think I think assets like Bitcoin, as well as things like stable coins, give people more choice in you know, either sometimes in developing countries and also developed countries. And I have hope in the sense that I mean, one of the one of the work I do is I work with egodeath capital, we do, you know, venture capital in this area. And so we basically get to meet founders who are building companies trying, you know, identifying some sort of monetary problem and trying to solve it. And so there are people out there, you know, in a decentralized way, saying, okay, here are these frictions, here’s areas where money is broken. You know, what can be done to do that. And so when I see people doing work like that, and getting to meet them that that does give me hope.

Adam Taggart 55:24
Do you think that, let’s say like, 100, let’s go fast forward 100 years, when they’re looking back in history books at this point in time? Will they look at sort of this moment in time as the sort of probably the way for money the way you think, you know, they’re already beginning to look back in time into the 70s and 80s, with the emergence of the Internet that, you know, change the world starting in the 90s?

Lyn Alden 55:50
I would like to think so, I think they would look back, kind of like how we look back, you know, in order technology times and think like, why were things like that? Or what would have life been like in that environment? I would like to think that far in the future, people will look back and just think, like, there were like, 160 different currencies, and people were just dealing with, like 20%, you know, annual currency supply growth, just year after year, just couldn’t do anything about it, and like, like, what a what an insane situation, or just the overall general policy of, you know, due to technology driven deflation. So we, on average, we get marginally better at making things year after year. And yet, so prices should go down, you know, slowly over time. And yet central banks do everything they can to make prices go up over time. And that has all sorts of semi invisible issues. throughout society. It basically it warps, you know, money is ever since you know, hi, I explore this topic, money, money, and prices are a signaling mechanism. It’s how it’s how we come to consensus on things, it’s an efficient way to share information money in price transactions. And by messing with that in a centralized way, that has implications. And so I would like to think the people will look back on this period and think like, this was a local maximum, this is not the best that money can be. And that this was also a period where a lot of things emerged, which hopefully, you know, 10 2050 100 years from now. It’s, uh, I would hope that it’s a better monetary environment than then there is now.

Adam Taggart 57:28
Okay, last question about the book, which is just where can folks get it? Pretty much anywhere books are sold?

Lyn Alden 57:34
Yeah, Amazon’s the easiest way. We’re working on more bookstore distribution. You can also go to the safe house.com. That’s sa if he has, you know, some of the books as well. It’s like an online bookstore. So yeah, basically, Amazon’s generally the easiest. Okay,

Adam Taggart 57:57
great. We’ll put the link down below, like I said, and we’ll put the safe house.com URL up on the screen. We ended this when I realized and neglected to ask an important question that folks will have wanted me to ask. So let me ask that, then we’ll wrap things up. What’s your current market outlook looking into 2024? And are there assets right now that you particularly favor and ones that you just wouldn’t touch with a 10 foot pole.

Lyn Alden 58:22
So I think that as as long as we’re still in this situation where the Fed is trying to tighten, risk assets have a very mixed outlook. And there’s all sorts of things like, basically, in the next eight months, we either do have an energy crisis, or we don’t that obviously affect things like you know, almost every prediction is a Boolean outcome based on energy prices. And so, you know, I like I said, I’m increasingly finding tips interesting. I do like gold and Bitcoin as as long term accumulations here. I don’t necessarily expect fireworks while we have this, this tightening situation. And I, you know, I would be cautious around overall equity exposure. I think T bills are interesting. I mean, as long as you can earn, like over 5%, on on, you know, these types of assets at a time and money supply is not growing quickly. There’s this window here, where I think that that makes sense. When we look at longer term, I would expect by maybe late 2024, maybe 2025. We probably have another positive liquidity cycle. And I would want to own you know, more liquidity driven assets.

Adam Taggart 59:33
Okay, great. Fantastic. All right, Lyn. Well, look, this has been just again, it’s always a wonderful discussion when you’re on thank you so much. To your point about money. Let me just toss one quick idea out here. I’ve had recent discussions in the comment sections below these videos where there’s there’s some percentage of the viewership. I’ll say the Wealthion viewership isn’t like a massive crypto audience. But there is curiosity about What’s going on in this space, and there’s been some requests for somebody who can come in and kind of give an update on what’s going on in the space. But but not somebody who’s, you know, so just philosophically wedded to whichever particular crypto they’re invested in, they want somebody who’s as open minded as possible. You totally fit that bill. And it’s, it’s, I’d love to have you come back on, and not necessarily just to discuss crypto but but to discuss sort of the future of money and the different, you know, models that are being built out there, and the pros and cons and trade offs of each. Is that something you’d ever be willing to come back and do on this channel?

Lyn Alden 1:00:37
Sure, I’d be happy to have that conversation. I mean, and it’s one of those things where crypto is unfortunately deserved a lot of its bad reputation. I mean, it’s, you know, when you when you bring a gatekeeper down, like if you decentralize media, or decentralized bookselling, and things like that, it opens up doors, but also opens up a long tail of basically bad products coming to market, right? There’s no, there’s no filter anymore. And this is basically what’s happened to securities were basically anyone can launch like a financial asset, and try to distribute them. And so naturally, that’s going to be a very scammy HYPEE type of thing. But I do think underneath a round, at least, at least around the core of it, there are kind of powerful technologies that are that are worth knowing about. And like I said, I think, you know, kind of that Bitcoin stable coin complex, as well as just the overall kind of development that’s happening in cryptography. I just think that there is signal under the noise. It’s just unfortunate. There’s a lot of noise in the space.

Adam Taggart 1:01:32
All right. Well, I really appreciate you being open to that, folks. I’ll talk with Lyn over the coming weeks and months to see if we can schedule that. Maybe Linda, what we can do is if we make it a live event where you come on and, you know, let you present whatever overall insights you want folks to know. But then we can just let the audience ask whatever questions it has. And you can you can be there just, you know, swinging at those pitches. Sure. Sounds good. I really appreciate that. All right, Lyn, we’ll look for folks that have really enjoyed this discussion and would like to follow you and your work, where should they go?

Lyn Alden 1:02:02
So I’m at linkedin.com. That’s where my main hub is. I’m also @lynaldencontact on Twitter. And, like, we can find the book broken money on Amazon or elsewhere. That’s, that’s, you know, the main place to find me.

Adam Taggart 1:02:16
All right. And again, when we edit this, we’ll put up the links to those on the screen. All right, well, stay just for one second, I just want to let folks know about two quick resources. One, just a reminder, folks Wealthion Online Conference fall online conference is coming up this weekend, you only have a couple of days left to register for it. So to go register for it, go to wealthion.com/conference best faculty we’ve had yet. Just I’ve recorded several of the presentations already, they are amazing. Hope to see you there on Saturday. And by the way, if you can’t watch the event live, don’t worry, everybody who registers will be sent replay videos of the entire event, all the presentations, all the replay video, all the q&a is the day after the event, if not sooner. And then as Lynn, you know, did a great job talking about here. So you know, a lot to navigate going forward. If you’re like most people, we highly recommend that, you know, while you’re trying just to stay on top of living your life providing for your family, that you work under the guidance of a good professional financial adviser who takes into account all of the macro issues that Lynne talked about here, if you’ve got a good one who’s doing that for you, great, stick with them. But if you don’t, or if you’d like a second opinion from when you’re does, consider scheduling a free consultation with one of the financial advisors endorsed by Wealthion. To do that, just go to wealthion.com Fill out the short form, there only takes a couple of seconds, totally free to have these consultations. There’s no commitment to work with these advisors. It’s just a free public service. They offer to help as many people as possible position as prudently as possible for what may lie ahead, Lynne, I want to thank you so much, folks, if you’d like to see Lyn, come back on. And if you’re interested in potentially having her come back on to have that monetary discussion we talked about, please show your support for that by hitting the like button and clicking on the red subscribe button below. When any parting bits of advice for the viewers today.

Lyn Alden 1:04:06
I mean, I think this is a time where there’s obviously a lot of hardship in the world. And I think you know, the best we can do is try to do our best to support our communities. Try to be good to each other online. Try to just, you know, add character to the world because a lot of what I talk about can be like do me you know, we talk about like sovereign debt crises are energy crises and things like that. But it’s important to know that crisis us have had before crises what happened in the future? Life Life goes on. And you know, you just have to do what you can to protect yourself while also living life. Not always being concerned about things that you can’t control and just try to just try to control the things you can

Adam Taggart 1:04:52
is very well said and you’re part of I think you said about what you’re saying is as the world is resilient Life is resilient markets are resilient and yes take steps to minimize your ability to take losses. But don’t necessarily develop a world is going to end tomorrow mentality and then miss out on the general recovery we tend to see through every every time we get challenged in history. Exactly. All right, Lyn, thanks so much. It’s been wonderful everyone else. Thanks so much for watching.