Unmasking 2024’s Economy: Chris Whalen on the Brink of Fiscal Chaos & Federal Manipulation

Eric Chemi 0:05
Welcome to Wealthion. I’m Eric Chemi. As we start 2024 We remember so many bad predictions about what happened in 2023. We didn’t expect that banks were going to fail. And yet they did. We saw some of the biggest failures in American history happened last year. And the outlook looks a little murky again for 2024. What’s going to happen? Are we going to see more bank failures? What’s the government’s role in this? What’s the Feds role in this? What’s happening with Fannie and Freddie interest rates, mortgages, they’re all connected. There’s a lot to discuss. So I’m bringing on one of the industry’s foremost experts on banks on finance. Chris Whalen is the chairman of Whalen Global Advisors. Chris, thank you so much for for spending some time with me today.

Chris Whalen 0:44
Oh, my pleasure, Happy New Year.

Eric Chemi 0:46
Happy New Year, too. And so when you start the year, you know, I know before we before we just got on, you said you were working on on some Basel comments. Tell me about that. That sounds that sounds almost as exciting as doing this podcast with me. Well,

Chris Whalen 1:00
I started my career as an analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, and I worked with a lot of mortgage lenders and banks. And the current proposal on raising capital yet again, on banks is so out of alignment with the way the markets are today, Eric, it’s almost as though they were on the clock back to 2012. And they decided to shoot new capital rules. And, you know, what’s the issue today that we’re facing in 2024? is how much volatility are we going to see in markets? If you think about it, the volatility from the Fed raising interest rates 600 basis points in a year, almost tipped over a lot of banks, it tipped over Silicon Valley Bank, the others failed for other reasons, but the high rates didn’t help. Right. So that’s really first of all, is

Eric Chemi 1:51
that the feds fault? Because it’s only like a couple of banks failed. And we have 1000s of banks. So it wasn’t like the

Chris Whalen 1:58
you know, you know, the progressives who populate the Federal Reserve Board Durnan, a conservatives working there, Eric, you know that right?

Eric Chemi 2:04
I did not know that.

Chris Whalen 2:08
There’d be a don’t entertain can you know, even classical liberal economics is too conservative for the board. They are full blown, kind of New Deal, liberals who believe in government, and they believe in spending money. And so what did they do wrong? They did too much. And then Congress piled on with another trillion dollars for the spending, loan, forgiveness, all sorts of things. And that’s why we don’t have a recession today. There’s still so much liquidity sloshing around in the system, that default rates, for example, on credit cards on mortgages are still pretty low. It’s incredible. But that’s why we haven’t had that classical recession that everybody was looking for last year.

Eric Chemi 2:50
You just said so much there, I want to break it all down one by one. I tried to keep notes along the way. So I did not realize that the Fed is totally progressive, because they have Republicans that nominate them, aren’t they represented by the banks? Do you think that’s a conservative kind of industry? kind of person? Right?

Chris Whalen 3:07
No, since the New Deal, really Americans been a kind of hybrid socialist market economy. The degree of government intervention has only grown, as you know, the size of the federal deficit. But the Fed itself is really a new deal organization, especially the Board of Governors, which wasn’t created until 1926. It’s a Washington bureaucracy. And as you know, so Well, Eric, it’s become a media circus. I mean, the board was never intended to have the central role in economic decision making, right. But as soon as they started targeting Fed Funds, instead of inflation and employment, they became the center of attention. So I, you know, it’s a former Fed employee and someone who follows a central bank closely, I would hope one day the chairman is going to tell his colleagues not to appear on television so much, and to reflect the consensus of the committee. And if they don’t like to consensus, they should resign. You know, that’s the way most democracies work, but ours does not. So, you know,

Eric Chemi 4:12
what isn’t healthy debate? Good? Don’t you want to say, Okay, we know you voted unanimously. But you don’t think unanimously I want to hear differing points of view. Isn’t it good that the market hears that there’s internally?

Chris Whalen 4:23
No, because we have plenty of economists who work for big bite sized firms doing that, okay. You want to be part of that crowd, then don’t work for the government. But I think the government has to reflect the consensus of the committee otherwise, we confuse people. How can they wait, the different opinions they hear, and the dot plots and everything else? Versus the opinion of the chairman, who should reflect the consensus of the committee and they should publish the votes they should publish them in? It’s your I mean, but still, I think it’s ineffective from a public policy perspective. If you want to communicate With the markets in a rational way, to have all these people all over the media, whatever they want, I don’t think that’s helpful. If I was at the Fed, believe me, I’d go back to the Greenspan era. And I would rotate the chairmanship of the Federal Open Market Committee to by the way, I would let each one of the governors play spokes, but why not? You know, it’s good training for them.

Eric Chemi 5:22
Is it fair to say that you were disgusted by what you saw working at the Fed, because what you’re saying is, it’s pretty cheated in terms of, I don’t like how it functions. If I was in charge, I do something completely different. What they’re doing isn’t great for America. And there’s not a lot of diversity of thought there. It sounds like you didn’t love your time there. And you’re at least speaking from the outside, but you’re not complaining from the inside. You’re looking at it.

Chris Whalen 5:46
I love the institution, I worked for Paul Volcker in shirt Corker, two great public servants, who cleaned up a lot of other people’s messes, by the way, particularly Jared Corrigan. And I think that, you know, we, that it changed in 2008, we came so close to literally falling off the edge of the table, as a couple of friends of mine said, Chris, we were all broke for a year, which, you know, the assets we own weren’t worth anything, that experience scared people so much that I think it made the Fed change. And they became much more of a fiscal organization, and much less of an independent central bank. I think the Feds independence has got, you know, read Simon white and Bloomberg, by the way, he’s very good. And he makes his point, which is when the debt gets so big, and the Fed has to be worried, first and foremost about keeping the Treasury market open more than anything else they worry about. Right. You don’t have any independence anymore. Janet Yellen is calling the shots. When she issued lots of T bills this year, that helped chair Powell get rid of his reverse RP backlog at the Fed. So this this relationship between the markets on the one hand, which we came and saved, right, and we’ve provided all the liquidity they need all the collateral they need, whenever they ask. Right. That’s the way the Fed has been since 2008. Could they say no, Eric? You know, what do you think? Do you think they could say no, if the markets were short collateral next week? No. Yeah, I

Eric Chemi 7:16
think it puts it puts them in a tricky spot. Right. So the idea that, like you said earlier, and we hear a lot of people say this, it’s the Fed that caused these banks to fail. But But I can’t believe that if it was like 1000 banks failed, and they were doing the right thing. But could you make the argument? Well, only a couple of banks failed. Everyone else did it fail. So those banks were doing something egregiously bad egregiously wrong, that’s why they fail. It’s not like I don’t

Chris Whalen 7:43
disagree with that Silicon Valley, which I figure prominently in my comments. So the Fed for next week, screwed up, you don’t put 40% of your assets and mortgage backed securities in a falling rate, and these people should go to jail. But on the other hand, done it a lot of people in the industry have taken some big hits, even if they’re not close to failure, okay, those assets that are trading at 75 or 80 cents on the dollar today, the money’s gone, Eric, the bank will have diminished earnings over time because they kept those assets. Big example Bank of America. Brian Moynihan is gross yield on his book is three quarters of a point below peer group one. And that’s because he kept those twos, two and a half some threes, that they wrote during that period, he should have sold them about T bills, he could have sold those loans for 104. Why

Eric Chemi 8:37
did he do? What’s the thought process there? Because it seems obvious to you, right?

Chris Whalen 8:40
They like keeping those assets historically. And this goes back to what I said, when we started volatility. What has the Fed done or markets in pursuit of Humphrey Hawkins, it is increased volatility in the markets. And when you look at the size of the deficit, and the amount of debt we have to roll every year now, that’s also going to contribute, we’re going to rehabilitate the concept of crowding out. Remember how the economist tried to get rid of that one? No, no, the Treasury is crowding out other activity now, because the deficits are so big, my fear for this year, by the way, what am I really worried about is that the yield curve is going to normalize, eventually, they’ll cut rates, so the short term rates will go down. But the long end of the curve will go up because Janet Yellen has such big deficits that she has to finance. Right?

Eric Chemi 9:28
Because right now, obviously, twos 10s, you know, for people watching and listening twos, 10s is inverted. Yield is higher than the 10 year yield. And that usually means or I don’t know if it’s usually or always, there’s a recession coming,

Chris Whalen 9:41
right? Well, it’s a salad bowl, it’s turned upside down on the kitchen counter. Okay. And, you know, the financing part of the economy when you think of new loans or any kind of new activity that finances off the short end of the curve, so Fed Funds figure five plus, but the long end is where the economy Jimmy raises long term capital for new companies, right? All sorts of activities. That’s what’s so interesting to me. Because if we end up normalizing interest rates for the first time in 20 years, okay, and end up having a normal curve, where Fed funds is, say in the high threes, mid fours, and stays here for a while, think about how the markets are going to change. mentioned, if we could actually have stable rates going forward, that would be an enormous change in a good way, or in a bad way? Oh, good way, I think it would settle a lot of things down might not be so good for people who raise cheap money two years ago who have to refinance. You know, there’s crazy stuff going on, you have a lot of new companies that came out in 2021, who’ve had to refinance debt. And so what they do is they keep the coupon the same, but they sell the debt at 80. And eventually, they’re gonna have to pay for that, because I’ll redeem the notes at par. But the point is, is that the change in interest rates has forced a lot of people to make some difficult adjustments, and it’s ongoing.

Eric Chemi 11:04
Did I hear you right there, you said your fear this year, is that the yield curve will get back to normal. But then isn’t that a good thing? Or why is that a fear?

Chris Whalen 11:11
It’s a good thing for the economy in the markets, but it implies a change in the cost of capital. That is, let’s just say not what people had top of mind years ago, even when the Fed was saying, Hey, we got to raise rates to fight inflation, right? Most people were still thinking about the past decade of accommodative policy of very low short term rates, and really an economy that was kind of sort of moving, you know, the mortgage industry didn’t come back until 2018. Really, terms of volumes. So, you know, if we end up with a normal curve, I think over time, that’s great. It’s going to be difficult for the federal government, because they do have to issue some long term debt. They can’t just issue T bills. One of the biggest acts of idiocy by the Treasury over the last several decades, was to say, oh, we should fund everything short. All right, if you have small deficits is great. But when you have the kind of deficits of you know, this society of viruses incurred, that’s gonna get to be very interesting.

Eric Chemi 12:14
Yeah, it’s gonna get he’s gonna get interesting. Or how concerned are you? With the size of the debt, the size of these deficits? The idea that interest rates, all of a sudden, 5% long term, the government can’t even afford the interest payments at 5%, let alone paying down the debt, right? No, you’re absolutely right. Where do you see this whole ecosystem? Are we are we all headed for this ticking time bomb, everyone says it’s coming. But it could be 50 years from now. And we might be dead before it happens. But it’s someone’s got to pay this bill at some point. Well,

Chris Whalen 12:47
effectively, we’re going to repeal the Humphrey Hawkins law, and the Fed will have to run the economy hot

Eric Chemi 12:54
tell law. What does that law mean, for people who don’t know? Well, it

Chris Whalen 12:58
basically was after the war, the Democrats were pushing for guaranteed employment for all Americans, mostly for soldiers. And the compromise said, well, the Fed is going to target full employment on the one hand, and price stability on the other hand, and there was a third mandate about long term stable interest rates, which we never talked about. Everybody

Eric Chemi 13:18
forgets that third nanny, they always talk about the dual mandate, they write three. Yeah,

Chris Whalen 13:23
but that’s the most important one, because, you know, keeping markets relatively stable, and boring is a good thing, both for incomes and for employment, because it lets people plan when you don’t know what’s going to happen to three months from now, it’s difficult to plan, an organization. Right capital. So anyway, but I think, I guess what I’m saying is, you will see an economy that is very different from the one we’ve had. And you know, we price 30 year mortgages off the 10 year treasury, it should be more like the 15 year Treasury right now. But still, that’s where that gets done. So if we ended up with the 10 year, say, at five and a half to six, which I think is very possible, then we’re talking about 8% more. There’s not a whole lot you can do about that people will go into floaters to lower their monthly payment. They’ll do a lot of other things. But I think that’s a very different world, from what the Fed did after 2008 When they basically threw away the rulebook, opened the doors and financed everything and anything that needed to be financed, right. The Home Loan Banks were there, Ginnie Mae was there, they were all working to provide liquidity to markets that had stopped. You know, we literally stopped between into 2008 and really 2010. And it was I was working for distressed servicer. It was quite a place to be at the time. That’s how I learned all about mortgages, by the way, nothing like working in the engine room to figure out what’s happening. Right.

Eric Chemi 14:53
Right. So then would they repeal the law like you said, if they repeal Humphrey Hawkins what due to how the Fed behaves, and then what does that mean for end consumers? And

Chris Whalen 15:04
I think to your question about debt, they’ll have to run the economy hot. In other words, we’ll have to tolerate a three or four or 5% inflation rate, we will look a lot more like the Latin nations of the 1970s, to the 1980s, or even Argentina today. Because when the fiscal balance gets so far out of line, not only do you have to attack it, you have to freeze spending and really start focusing it, but you have to use inflation, to diminish the real value of the debt. And that’s what they’re going to do. It’s effectively a default, we just take a little bit of money from you every year.

Eric Chemi 15:42
We don’t wipe you out in one day, we wait 20 years. And

Chris Whalen 15:46
I think it’s inevitable because us who’s going to pay their bills. You know, going back to the Civil War, when we created greenbacks to finance the War Between the States, one way or another, we’re going to finance the country, but the value of the dollar may suffer. And that’s, that’s something else to think about. So

Eric Chemi 16:04
that happens, then two questions. Where do you put your money? Where do you where do you invest? Is it hard assets? Is it just your nominal base stock market? Where do you invest? And then number two, what does that mean for the reserve currency reserve status of the United States?

Chris Whalen 16:22
Well, we’ll do the first one. First, the reserve status, the United States is a function of the fact that the currency is large and liquid. So oil commodities, big things can be funded with dollar payments. Most other currencies aren’t big enough to accommodate those kinds of trade and commercial flows. As long as the currency is relatively stable, people will use it to pay for things, but they’re not going to use it as a store of value. They will continue to use it as a unit of account, but they will increasingly keep assets elsewhere to avoid the inflation, right. So you know, I’m not that worried about the role of the dollar in terms of commerce, but I am worried that people aren’t going to want to hold our debt, then they’re gonna demand a higher yield to do something.

Eric Chemi 17:09
How high? How high is that? What do you what do you see?

Chris Whalen 17:12
Okay, I work years ago in Mexico during the debt crisis, okay. And in that case, the central bank and you’ve seen this all over the world had to defend the spot rate for the currency, Argentina’s, in this situation, if they don’t raise the rate, people don’t want to take one day risk and new currency. Now, years ago, when I was a little younger, we used to actually worry about debt and Treasury auctions and inflation, there was a time when the dollar used to get kicked around quite a lot. Then we got to be so big and reinflated Ark are economy so much, that we kind of had this sense that we could do whatever we wanted. So I think what I look for is when Treasury gets into a defensive position again, and you saw this back in October, November, because Treasury wanted to issue more long term debt. But the dealers apparently went back to Secretary Yellen and said, No, you’re not going to get it at the yield you want. And so they issued more T bills, and they changed the allocation that the committee had recommended for Treasury. That makes me a little nervous. Because, you know, if we don’t have three bids, for every dollar of debt that we sell, we have a problem.

Eric Chemi 18:22
Does it need to be three bids? Can it be to two and a half, one and a half? Does it need to be three? Because that means there’s more bids than the rate is good?

Chris Whalen 18:29
Lots of retail to please. It’s just like an IPO. There’s no difference. You want lots of bidders. And that’s always been the case with us not remember, the guys who fund Treasury auctions are bunch of hedge funds, doing the basis trade. It’s not like all these investors line up that day, and say, Yeah, I’ll take the bonds, and I’m not gonna ever trade them ever again.

Eric Chemi 18:52
No, right. It’s that Treasury direct retail here. It’s not overnight.

Chris Whalen 18:56
But eventually it gets put away. These securities have to be sold by somebody, people always forget that part. So that’s how it works. And the composition of the buyers of treasuries has changed over the years. It’s not just the Bank of Japan and the Bank of China. It’s all sorts of people. So we always have to be sensitive to that. Whether you’re selling treasury bonds, or Ginnie, Mae’s, the government has to be sensitive to how investors view us. And since we’re now a double A plus credit, even a Moody’s has enacted yet, I think, you know, it’s only only down from here I can I think that over time, we’re gonna have to revisit how we think about things like ratings. Is the sovereign always gonna be the top of the scale when it comes to ratings? You know, is Apple a better credit than the United States? Right?

Eric Chemi 19:49
You better off with a random company that doesn’t have the power of taxation that doesn’t have a military. Is that actually a better credit than one that does have a military and Tax Power?

Chris Whalen 19:58
No, I think the military are in tax power is what really backs up currency.

Eric Chemi 20:02
So then it goes back to your credit rating thing, then then should Apple or Microsoft or whoever be a higher rating than the US government? Maybe not.

Chris Whalen 20:11
Or Google merges with Amazon and takes over the world.

Eric Chemi 20:16
Then it’s the robot army coming to get all of us, right?

Chris Whalen 20:19
No, I was so pleased to see the New York Times suing all the AI guys, that’s that’s precious.

Eric Chemi 20:26
Let’s, let’s, I want to get into that in a second. But I want to get back to that other question. So in a world where we’re going to see this, let’s say three to 4% inflation for a couple of decades to default over time, let’s say, and maybe bond yields are higher. So you know, bond funds go down? So what does that mean for that classic 6040? Portfolio? What does that mean? For where do you put money in a world that is inflationary? Is it? Is it gold? Is it Bitcoin? Is it just the stock market? Because it’ll just move up on inflation numbers? Is it real estate? Like, what do you do? Or either what is Chris Whalen doing with his money? Or what are you telling friends and family to do with this?

Chris Whalen 21:04
Well, what I tell my friends and my clients is that I think you have to always be focused on real assets, first and foremost, that are located well, in other words, you don’t just want to buy real estate, you want to buy real estate that’s relevant, and has practical use. Okay, that’s what we’re learning today about cities, post COVID, there are some lovely pieces of real estate in cities that have lost their use case. So we really don’t know what to do with them. We talked about converting offices in the resi. But that’s very expensive and very difficult to do. Stocks, obviously, because stocks are going to tend to ride on top of the water in terms of inflation. It’s just it’s where historically people have been able to hide from inflation, debt, no other things. Well, you know, I leave that up to consenting adults, I’m not a big fan of crypto, I I’d rather speculate with stocks or roll dice. You know, I, I think it’s more fun. Because most of my friends in crypto are former poker players and derivatives traders, that’s seems to be the MO for that particular activity. You know, alternative currencies? No, I think unfortunately, the world is going to consolidate around currencies more and more. Because that’s just the way the world system is headed, you’re gonna have a couple of big blocks with the Chinese and the Russians probably together. And then you’re gonna have a very large block focused on the US and Europe, and miscellaneous others, you know, that’s just the way it’s going to go. With the Chinese. They don’t want to take over the role of the dollar as a means of exchange, they can’t even control their own economy. The last thing they need is to become the means of exchange for the entire world. Do you imagine the Bank of China would collapse?

Eric Chemi 22:51
So why would that happen to explain?

Chris Whalen 22:54
It’s too small, way too small. When we started limiting the access of Chinese firms in the US to doing public listings here. Remember? Where did they go? They went to Hong Kong. They tried to go to Switzerland. This was said, no, they looked around Europe. But there aren’t any really big markets out there that are easily accessed by foreign issuers, like Chinese companies. And they don’t have a great track record anyway. So to attract foreign capital, especially big institutional money’s, it’s hard. That’s why the US is still such an attractive market with all of the regulations. And all of the anti money laundering and other misery that we put foreigners through in this country is still the best place in the world to raise money. So

Eric Chemi 23:40
are you bearish? Are you bullish?

Chris Whalen 23:43
I’m bullish on inflation. I have to reissue my 2010 book inflated, we obviously have to add a chapter.

Eric Chemi 23:51
Yeah, it’s amazing how even synthetic we thought it was bad then. Now Now imagine now the world

Chris Whalen 23:58
is about layers of leverage. Okay, economies don’t generally create enough opportunity for all of its people. So in order to kind of fudge it, we use inflation. And we use a lot of debt. Look at China’s Belt and Road policy. They’re basically trying to get rid of surplus humans who they send offshore. They don’t want them to come home, by the way. And they build projects that are marginally economic.

Eric Chemi 24:24
They send them to random other countries like the Chinese government, Chinese workers that they don’t want in China to go build playthings in Africa and Latin America. Nobody needs

Chris Whalen 24:34
you got it. And it’s a political, it’s a way to release political pressure. And it also creates nominal growth in the economy, nominal utilization of people, right. But are they really creating wealth in China? I would argue no, the communists stick to huts that they use to make economic decisions are as bad as the decisions that Joe Biden makes. Look at the whole thing with electric cars. technology that’s still not quite read. You realize I wrote about the smart Ford book, realized that they were making electric cars 100 years ago, and they really wanted to, but the tech was just not there. And even today, with more efficient motors, they’re extraordinarily efficient compared to the old days a better battery

Eric Chemi 25:18
gas gas engine cars are very efficient. There’s much less emission. Generation go, yeah.

Chris Whalen 25:23
So what’s the answer of hybrids? It turns out the Toyota was right, one of my favorite stocks. I love Toyota, they’re boring as hell. But they’re very focused, and they’re very, very good at execution. Would

Eric Chemi 25:37
I go back? Because you mentioned the the electric car thing. And and you mentioned China? Yeah.

Chris Whalen 25:43
It’s just an example of state director, economic growth, it does oftentimes result in positive outcomes.

Eric Chemi 25:51
So we’re getting that here that right? It’s gonna be oh, this state decided we’re going to ban all fossil fuel based cars. So no, they’re economically. So we’re just going to make it illegal. Even though the market dynamics people don’t want it at these prices. And at these reliability, eventually,

Chris Whalen 26:05
everyone’s gonna leave California and move to Texas. And then what are they gonna do? You know, Texas will kick them out of Washington saying in the mortgage industry anywhere, but California, ABC. Oh, yeah. Because the people that you want are in California, but you can’t afford to employ them in California, because the cost is so high. So they all move to Texas or Florida, where the cost is a third. It’s crazy.

Eric Chemi 26:32
But they’re getting expensive. Florida is getting expensive. Texas is getting expensive.

Chris Whalen 26:36
Oh, yeah. Well, insurance can’t get a homeowner’s insurance in Florida now because of the weather and a growth. A lot of the underwriters who just said Nope, don’t want to do this anymore. And so I have friends who have been there for decades who are moving. Come back to New York. I think that’s

Eric Chemi 26:55
great. That would be that’d be quite the the irony, right? It’s like, okay, everyone from Florida and Texas. They’re new. They’re moving back to New York, New Jersey.

Chris Whalen 27:03
They all come here in the summer, because it’s too damn hot in Dallas. I go down to Texas once or twice a month. So trust me, it gets warm.

Eric Chemi 27:13
It gets real warm real fast down there. Oh, god.

Chris Whalen 27:15
Yeah,

Eric Chemi 27:17
I’m looking at gray skies. It’s wet. It’s rainy. All the leaves have fallen off the branches here in the Northeast. There’s not a lot of life up here in January in the northeast, but it is it is what it is. You know, it’s funny cuz you think New York City is expensive. And all of a sudden you look at Florida and Texas and California. I thought New York was expensive. Geez, these places are even worse than you add on the insurance and all these other things. It’s not a great deal.

Chris Whalen 27:44
And it’s ala carte, so you don’t get any deals. I think what you’re seeing in the south is a great deal of overbuilding, because a lot of investors and developers did not like what they see in states like New York with the political situation. The rent control legislation, by the way, is another fiasco in New York. So they went down to Texas, of the Carolinas everywhere else built a lot of commercial. And what’s fascinating, right? Because if these new properties are actually driving out the old ones, people look at that brand new building down in Florida, and they don’t want the B or C office space down the road. So all of that’s gonna go

Eric Chemi 28:23
over stuff that was built in the 90s in the 2000s. Like, why am I here? It’s brand new thing across the street.

Chris Whalen 28:28
So you know, it’s good and bad. But I think you are going to see a bit of a retrenchment in Texas over the next couple of years, I got to slow down. There’s just not enough demand to absorb I mean, go to some place like South Lake west of Dallas, kind of between Dallas and Fort Worth. And that’s all mortgage people, by the way. And the amount of development and malls and restaurants and everything is just out of control. It’s too much. It’s

Eric Chemi 28:53
unsustainable.

Chris Whalen 28:54
I do I think I think they have exceeded the amount of short term demand and it’s going to be like we’ve seen in the past. They’re going to have to consolidate and restructure some of these things. But long term, are they going to absorb it? Yeah. Look, damn, yeah. Texas is the fastest growing part of the US economy.

Eric Chemi 29:12
Do you think there may be some developments that implode financially, but as a general rule, the state will be able to there’s just so much space, there’s so much room to grow, even if some overdeveloped sites kind of lose their shirt that

Chris Whalen 29:25
made sense it really low interest rates in 2020 may not make sense now. And also you’ve just build too much you run out of tenants and customers. What I’ve noticed that a Texas is downtown’s empty, just like all the other big cities now the assets in downtown are definitely under utilized. And then most of the growth and the activities moved out to the burbs which have been growing like a house of fire for the past couple of years, but they have probably overdone it too. So we’re going to definitely see a think of a little bit of a slowdown in development in those small markets. And same thing with Miami, you see the same thing in Miami. There’s been just a huge surge of investment, both traditional developers who were always in Florida, and a lot of people from outside the state just showed up with money.

Eric Chemi 30:13
So a lot of people showed up with money into Miami and Florida for sure. So well,

Chris Whalen 30:18
you know, going back to your question about, you know, the markets and banks, right, what I’ve seen in my group over the past couple of months, which is fascinating. At first, everybody was positioned for kind of a recession, and banks were trading at a deep discount. You had people in the FinTech space, like a firm and upstart and even Coinbase kind of bounce in last this past year, because, you know, just a variety of factors. But now all of a sudden, we’re talking about rate cuts, and how the economy is going to be fine. These stocks haven’t moved. Here another, the banks have surged recently, I’m writing a note about the top 10 For next week, and who’s at the top of the list, but customers Bank Corp, a little bank from Pennsylvania, and why never heard of them did a lot of PPP lending is run by a very astute guy, who was a Commerce Bank years ago and sold to, you know, the big guys. And then he went out and started this new bank JC do. And he’s, you know, he’s a good operator, they were pursuing that same clientele, that Signature Bank used to pursue the small to midsize businesses in New York. Asset Management, they do all sorts of things. But his performance in the fourth quarter is going to be quite good. And he was just galloping along. Now, mind you, he’s just barely above book. This was a stock that was trading at half a book value a year ago. But then Capital One also came on, they bounced because everybody says no recession, that stock was trading at half a book, city. My God has started moving, largely because James Fraser has been you know, cutting expenses quite a lot and getting rid of some

Eric Chemi 32:01
get rid of the whole company, all the employees are going to be gone. If this virtual

Chris Whalen 32:06
Goldman, I’ve always said this, why do I say that you merge the investment bank, you let the boys run the broker dealer, okay, you have a much bigger bank, you have real deposits, okay, that adds stability to the post merger entity. You have the payments, platform global payments, which is probably worth as much as the entire company today. If you look at the market cap, and then you have the subprime book, which has saved the city going back 3040 years, big yields, the defaults at times can be a problem, but overall, they make money. So you know, I think it’d be a fascinating idea because both Goldman and Citi are kinda left out. They don’t have the big asset management business or, you know, city sold their business Morgan Stanley, look at Morgan Stanley, they’re head to head with UBS. Now they are the two winners among the asset.

Eric Chemi 32:59
What do you think about you know, Citigroup, doing massive layoffs, Goldman struggling, they’re just dumping the whole consumer business. You mentioned Buy now pay later, that’s taking off in terms of people like I don’t want to deal with credit cards, I’d be buying those all to me look like signs of weakness, right? It looks like just general industry economic weakness. Do you see it in that way? Or do you think rate cuts are gonna save all this? Or is it bigger than rate cuts?

Chris Whalen 33:24
No, in terms of these two franchises, they have a fundamental problem, which is what do I do when I grow up? Okay, if I don’t have a real asset management business is kind of an anchor. And if I don’t have a really first Tier capital markets business as another leg of the stool, right, and then I need that bank, that makes money, it doesn’t have to hit it out of the park. But it’s got to at least be right at the peer group in terms of asset and equity returns. That to me is a business that can survive. But if you look at them now, they’re both two legged stools. two legged stools are unstable as we know, you know, it’s called a bicycle. So I worry about that because look at their peers, ba wells, both big domestic banks, not so much Wall Street exposure, you know, Merrill Merrill is not a big program trader, they’re not a big derivative shop. So it’s really Goldman and Morgan Stanley now that dominate that side of the business city second rate, you know, investment bank, they’ve been fading for years for a lot of reasons. So what do you do with that long term if it ends up being the subprime consumer book, which is only got half core deposits underneath it, by the way, you have this still, you know, foreign business, mostly upstairs banking, private banking, that kind of thing. You know, it’s it’s not a it’s not an obvious it’s not a business you would build today that way or this way, right, you know, cities a legacy of the past. They were in all the right places during the 70s and the 80s Great

Eric Chemi 34:58
80s company. My mom worked for a company, a small little bank. And she had some stock from that bank. And then it got bought by 10 other banks along the way, and it became Citi Group stock. But this is like an 80s job she had in the 80s, that that became the city stock.

Chris Whalen 35:14
But they you know, remember, they were the first bank in the United States to offer subprime mortgages in the 80s. Okay, anything stuff that that no doc mortgages, and they offered it globally? I’m working on another book. And it’s just, I was at the Fed at the time, and I kind of remembered it. And I thought, no, did they really offer that product in Japan? And yes, they did. And they kind of naively. It was like credit card loans for a house, and there was no credit reporting system in any of these countries, you couldn’t find these people

Eric Chemi 35:47
ask for the money, we’ll give you the money, and we’ll help you pay it back. No. So

Chris Whalen 35:52
but you know, they tried they were the first foreign bank in China. Right?

Eric Chemi 35:57
They were the global they were the real, true global leaders at the time. So when you think about rate cuts? Do you think that’s a good thing? Do you think it’s just a necessary thing, the Fed is just going to have to cut rates, because you said, they just need to keep this inflation going, they need to keep the economy Hunter, we’re going to see 5% yield on policy rates anytime, again, once they bring it back down?

Chris Whalen 36:19
Well, we’re not going to go back down to where we were in 2020. Let’s make

Eric Chemi 36:23
some music three, maybe three or four,

Chris Whalen 36:25
I think three and a half to four and a half is a reasonable rate three and a half. If you have a recession, I think the board has learned that they didn’t get a lot of bang for the buck, below 3%. It’s not clear other than in housing, that the rest of the economy really got that much more incrementally help. And

Eric Chemi 36:45
you’re still close to zero, that at least it did you get the benefit of a very low rate without the the extreme negative externality of bizarre behavior that happens when it’s zero. Well,

Chris Whalen 36:57
that’s right. And you know, when they saw money market funds, and then they saw the problems with banks, I think a number of people at the federal level chastened by that experience, they don’t like having to have the FDIC publishing charts that shows that the industry is insolvent. And, you know, I hope going forward, we’re going to see maybe a rate cut this year and a couple next year, and that should be it. This economy is not doing badly at current rates. So if you got fed funds back to four, leave it there. What do you see there isn’t something that causes you to change it? Let’s put it that way.

Eric Chemi 37:33
What do you say to people who are nervous about buying here at the top at all time highs on the major indices generally? Is that? Is that a place you want to be buying? Are you looking at a big drop in 2024? Where are you positioned it you know, let’s say you get you get a bonus at the end of the year, right? Or the January bonus, you get your new savings? Are you supposed to put it in stocks at all time highs when when there’s still a lot of nervousness? Well,

Chris Whalen 37:57
I’ll give you my own portfolio, I’m about 60% Fixed Income and bank preferred, which I like to buy when there’s blood in the street. You know, buying a $25 preferred at 18 always makes me happy. And then I own a little bit of New York Community Bank, I’m starting to accumulate wealth, so sort of my only two common holdings. And then on the tech side, I traditionally have had a lot of Nvidia, because I used to cover semiconductor capital equipment years ago, and I took a lot of money off the table once I got about 400, because I had a ridiculous gain, it was too big for my portfolio, I’m gonna get to 500. I know it’s okay. But I still have a pretty good chunk. And I like okay, but what we’ve seen is certain sectors have performed really well. And in sectors like financials know, fintechs, as we talked about before, have gone crazy. And yet, if you take a look at a stock, like a firm look at where it was five years ago, that 400% gain in the last 12 months is nothing compared to where that stock was when

Eric Chemi 39:04
companies had dropped 90%. They jumped 90% To go from 100 to 10. To 20. To go they doubled, take another stood that 80%

Chris Whalen 39:13
So the question, you know, back to your question, right? Is, are stocks a good place to hide from inflation? And the answer is that depends. If it’s inflation caused by a real externality like COVID. You know, I think that was one of the more interesting opportunities you’re gonna see because it was so clearly unexpected. And it causes such distortions that if you could keep your nerve, you made a lot of money. I got out of bank comments in the beginning of 20. As soon as I saw Fed Funds heading to zero, I thought, ah, because we assumed that we were going to have a credit event. It didn’t happen. We had to give all that money back the following year. So we’ve distorted bank earnings dramatically for 18 months. We’re still messing with that. So today, are they cheap now? On the banks that JP Morgan a 1.7 Times Book is not particularly cheap. That’s my benchmark.

Eric Chemi 40:06
That’s your benchmark. You mentioned I have to

Chris Whalen 40:09
Amy and then I have Ginnie Mae threes. When I get up in the morning. The first thing I want to know is where are Ginnie Mae threes right now? They’re about 88. That’s not too bad. Right? They weren’t a 30 point discount before. So if you’re a banker, and you’re looking to restructure your portfolio, now is a good time to do it. Take the pain Cielos bonds and go buy something with a 6% or 7% yield.

Eric Chemi 40:33
What do you think about as you mentioned, the Ginnie Mae makes you think about like Fannie and Freddie, do you think they should get out of conservatorship go back to buying mortgages, buying MBs and then start kind of going back to the old world are you like where things are right now?

Chris Whalen 40:46
No, the government has killed any possibility that Fannie and Freddie could ever come out of conservatorship, they are totally postal now, the people from the industry, who were there who were hoping that they would come out of conservatorship during Trump have largely departed. And, you know, the politics during the Biden administration, unfortunately, has not been helpful. The politics had Fannie and Freddie, in terms of their willingness to work with people in the industry, the cash window, for example, has become a joke. You go in there to buy or sell loans, and they start beating you up because you haven’t made enough loans to low income households. The whole the whole tenor of the places is wrong, Eric, and think of it this way, I often try to remind my friends in Washington who have no idea about finance, Fannie and Freddie are pennymac with an insurance company. In other words, they not only are an issuer that sells mortgage backed securities, you know, they buy loans, obviously, but they also own the servicing on all of those assets, and they insure the loans. They’re like, you know, one of the private mortgage insurance, that’s a complicated business, right? You cannot run that business without a government raising the money. Yeah, the moment you’re a single a issuer, which is what would happen to Fannie if they came out of conservatorship, Moody’s would downgrade them a full notch. They’d fail, then you tell

Eric Chemi 42:15
us Yeah, so they’re sort of stuck. Okay.

Chris Whalen 42:18
Well, Jamie is a double a commodity. He’s the biggest mortgage servicer in the United States. Give me a break. Why do you think he’s in that business? By the way, you know, Bank of America ran out of that business Wells is leaving now. Jamie is not going anywhere. He loves that business.

Eric Chemi 42:34
Why is he so why is he making that decision to the other side, because

Chris Whalen 42:37
they’re mostly prime conventional loans or Jumbos that they could sell to Fannie and Freddie he doesn’t do any Ginnie Mae won’t have anything to do with the government loan market, which is smart. So, you know, it’s, it’s his customers do subprime loans 720 FICO scores, no problems, right.

Eric Chemi 42:59
Yeah, different kind of ballgame there, then, then you may be thinking about something as you were, as you were saying, Oh, yeah. So we think about the big banks. You mentioned some of these regional ones like the Pennsylvania one, or the regional banks of value trap, do you want to just stay with the big banks versus regionals? Because you’re getting different government treatment depending on size, right? If we’re going to

Chris Whalen 43:20
do your homework, what I would tell you is if you’re looking at banks, first thing you got to do is go pull up their performance report on the Fed website. It’s called the National Information Center, and just pull it up. It’s a bunch of statistics, but you want to see if they have a big bar to market loss, other comprehensive income. If that is a negative number, you want to know how big it is relative to their capital, and you want small you want something that’s less than 20%. And then you want to look at their real estate exposure. How much are they into commercial? Because commercials the pain point right now, the bank owned residential mortgages that we were just talking about there. They have negative default rates right now. We’re not going to worry about them for at least another year or two. I think the reset in residential mortgages won’t come till 27 or 28. So we got a couple years of boom and bust ahead of us commercial is today. And those stories are all idiosyncratic they’re all over the place. It’s chopped salad. You could have a building that’s great. Right next to a building that’s not great. And it’s

Eric Chemi 44:26
it’s not about the city that stayed it could literally be just like the same block.

Chris Whalen 44:30
Oh, no, wait, it’s about this. If it’s a blue city, be careful. Okay, okay. The Democrats have managed to destroy urban real estate values New York City is to classic But San Fran to Chicago. Oh, God help us. So all of

Eric Chemi 44:47
the discount. San Frisco is the is the home of you know, the tech scene and data die like do you

Chris Whalen 44:53
know in the valley, in the valley, they don’t live in the city. Some of them live in this stuff. There’s

Eric Chemi 45:00
a bit of overlap, but you still think it’s part of the Bay Area. There’s some there’s some of these guys in San Francisco, do you? Do you see a tech industry negative effect, like a negative effect on the tech industry because of what’s happening in San Francisco or you think San Francisco is totally different, because the real issue is like the real innovations in Silicon Valley in San Francisco can die on its own and not affect the tech industry,

Chris Whalen 45:19
go down to San Jose, like they’ve been doing for 20 years. You know, that’s, that’s the interesting thing is it, you would have thought that the city fathers in San Francisco would have their act together enough to just make sure that the city stayed reasonably nice and didn’t completely careen out of control, because you’re seeing commercial assets are trading at 50 cents on the dollar. And what that means,

Eric Chemi 45:43
would you buy only 50 cents on the dollar? You bite it like two cents on the dollar? No,

Chris Whalen 45:48
I wouldn’t. Because again, you have to look at the use of the building and say, are tenants using the building? Do they want to? What does the rent roll look like compared to two years ago? Did they have to make concessions to tenants to keep them? You know, look at workforce, which is one of the biggest tenants in San Francisco, right? If they pull out of there, and they probably should, that could easily go out to the valley. It’s gonna be expensive. But you know, in terms of security for your people, I think they almost have to. I do a lot of stuff at the mortgage bankers, we kind of be very careful about where we do. We were just in Philadelphia, Philly is a nightmare downtown. It was crazy. You know, people had to fight their way through angry crowds to get to the hotel.

Eric Chemi 46:36
Yeah, I’m just, I’m just sitting here at home in the burbs. Right. It’s a very different experience, to

Chris Whalen 46:41
say we live in Westchester. Now, I live at the top of Westchester County, when we moved out of New York City, we cut our expenses by two thirds. There’s no way I can make New York City Affordable guys. I’m sorry. Everybody who talks about that is crazy. Because it cost a build the cost to maintain assets in that city is so,

Eric Chemi 47:00
so expensive. If you’re a billionaire in New York City is perfectly affordable. And it’s well they’re

Chris Whalen 47:05
not affected. But the everyday person, I mean, think about if your boss decided to take offices over in Hudson Yards. And you know, they disregarded my old friend Dale him at dinner, great real estate developer in New York, who wanted to knock down the Javits Center and build a new convention center closer to the Penn Station, right. But

Eric Chemi 47:25
just far enough away that it’s hard to get there. It’s just like God, transportation,

Chris Whalen 47:29
and people got to walk three avenues to get the work and paint. That’s great. So, but that’s the market economy, you know, things are not done in a rational way. Robert Moses is dead. He used to order everything in New York, but we don’t have a Robert Moses anymore.

Eric Chemi 47:46
Too much gunked up stuff. Take anything that you mentioned that you mentioned that New York Times lawsuit against, I guess it was less of an open AI. The your Why Why? Why does that excite you? What’s your thought process on that? Well,

Chris Whalen 47:59
that’s their content. All of these AI guys think that the world is free for them to turn their computers on? I think I hope to Tom’s cleans their clock, I really don’t. The guys at Microsoft, all of these arrogant assholes, they need to realize they serve their customers don’t the other way around. And the time zones that content, I hope they can monetize this claim. But I’m a volunteer to help them. I used to collect judgments years ago, it’s great fun going into court and whacking somebody. Have

Eric Chemi 48:28
you ever looked up your own books if you go into chat GPT. And in turn, if you ask him to summarize your book, I’ve done that I decided on and he was an authorized and you know, because he didn’t know how AI worked to say, look, you can just go and ask them questions about your book. And it’ll tell you stuff about your book, right? So it clearly has read it. It’s clearly read the book and is telling people stuff about the book, and you’re not getting a dime from it. So you should ask you to Hey, summarize Chris Whelan book, got it out and see what it says I’m

Chris Whalen 48:58
gonna I’m gonna turn one of my family members loose, who used to collect copyright. It’s a lot of fun. You know, when you catch somebody with a copyright violation and us they’re done. You just send them a letter, say, write me a check.

Eric Chemi 49:11
Write me a check how much interest if you see it? If they’re referencing your book, how much is the check you’re asking for

Chris Whalen 49:16
each? Each instance of use, I believe is $250,000.

Eric Chemi 49:23
How do you measure instances of use? pondering

Chris Whalen 49:25
that? I don’t know we’re gonna have to do some work on this. Or

Eric Chemi 49:28
you should start hitting it up like 100 times 100 instances

Chris Whalen 49:32
Well look, I created content you know, you work with people who create content you create content, Eric and

Eric Chemi 49:37
a whole that’s all you got. That’s

Chris Whalen 49:39
all we got. That’s right.

Eric Chemi 49:40
But you wouldn’t you wonder if it’s from the Google perspective, where Google they were taking all the money there was links it was different. So they were sending you to the link, but it was just hey, the world is available to us, for us to link to and then I think these guys took it one step further. Oh, why link to it? We can just keep it ourselves and Oh, perspective. It’s

Chris Whalen 50:00
all about advertising. But you know, back to your earlier question I’m not. I’m actually fairly bullish about the coming year, I think the economy’s not even gonna bounce, it’s gonna just keep floating along, I think home prices will soar as we wrote this week, and that’s not good. But you know, the Fed doesn’t care about home prices when it comes to inflation. So they ignore

Eric Chemi 50:24
it, like their version of inflation is like, okay, take inflation that you as a person face, and we’ll subtract out 10 Things that are hugely important to it. And we’ll focus on this little narrow piece of it. And then we’ll do policy based on

Chris Whalen 50:36
that one of the things that happen to the Fed not just after 2008, but even way before that, is they became much more of a cheerleader for the Treasury. And they kept trying to say, Oh, well, inflation slow, we don’t have to worry about budget deficits. Now, inflation is not low guys, inflation has been double digits for a long time. If you include housing and food and health care and energy, people have to die. And so the agency’s credibility is limited. But there’s such a large Sanhedrin of economists who are sitting there cheering for them and hoping to get jobs at the Fed, of course, that, you know, it’s hard to get to the truth. And most members of Congress are incapable of even discussing this stuff. I remember Henry B. Gonzalez, one of my favorite members of Congress, he understood, you know, he was a child of garment workers from Laredo, Texas, but he understood the Fed very well. But we don’t have too many people like that today. Now,

Eric Chemi 51:38
yeah. So then, you know, and with the last question, we’d like to end with a perspective on this year, if you had to put your money somewhere and let’s say someone watching you say, hey, you know what, I’m not going to be doing bank prefers. I’m not an expert, like Chris’s, I’m just sort of a regular investor, would you? Would you say is like just s&p? Is it NASDAQ? ETFs? Is it? Is it Do you want some tea bills here? Because it’s probably long term, long term bonds, you probably don’t want to mess with us? Because those guys might get creamed over time? Where does someone with kind of a relative sense of using the basic instruments, the most common instruments? Where would you suggest they put their money?

Chris Whalen 52:12
Well, if you’re trying to lock in yields going out three, four or five years in either treasuries or agencies, and if you like that mid single digit yield, and you can go get some of that now, I think the stocks generally, the high growth sectors, including tack, are going to shake off all the concerns, and the China worries and everything else. And they’re going to keep running, in my view, financials, I think, are going to probably retreat a bit, because we’re still worried about credit. And we have to make, you know, ensure that people don’t believe that, but that’s going to take a while. I think that’s why they haven’t gone up more frankly, they kind of petered out at the beginning of December. But for the rest of the economy, I mean, you can see that autos are down a bit, it’s clearly slowed. But not that much. I don’t see a recession on the horizon, you

Eric Chemi 53:01
don’t see a soft landing, hard landing any landing, you just see, the only

Chris Whalen 53:05
thing I worry about Eric is because of the volatility we’ve seen in markets, and in many economic indicators over the past few years, I’ve worried that we may see a sudden jump, for example, in credit card defaults, quarter to quarter. And that would then indicate that we’re going to see even higher credit costs next year. I’ll give you an example. If you look at the bottom 20% of FHA borrowers, which are typically lower income households, first time homebuyers that sort of thing, much higher default rates during the mid teens, the FHA default rates about 9% today, which is not unusual, it’s kind of average, really. But once it gets up in the double digits, that’s when the alarm bells start going off. Because that indicates that the better credits above it, are going to also get into trouble over time. So you know, it’s kind of the canary in the coal mine, I also think it’s a part of the population that got kicked around badly during COVID. And so they’re still having credit trouble. But we’ve got less than half a million people in the US today that are going through forbearance. So that basic loan wound. And that’s a pretty, pretty positive indicator.

Eric Chemi 54:14
So you don’t worry about the idea that oh, you know, every time there’s a yield curve, inversion, we always see a recession, you think we could No,

Chris Whalen 54:22
no, those indicators went by after 2008. You know, the most interesting indicator I always point people to is if you look at the Treasury yield curve, and then you layer dollar swaps on top of it, the swaps curve trades out the 50 year, what happened it is but outside of seven years, it trades below treasury yields. What does that mean? It means there’s a lot of demand for dollars out there. And as long as that’s the case, as long as we don’t have to pay a premium to do fixed floating swaps and dollars, especially long term. That’s a pretty positive indicator for the US economy if it flips round again. And it goes back to the way it was before 2008. I would worry,

Eric Chemi 55:04
okay. This is great. Where, where can people find more of your stuff like the website that social media tell us where everyone can find more of you?

Chris Whalen 55:14
I published the institutional risk analyst, which is an old blog we created in 2003, myself and Dennis Santiago. And then I wrote a column for national mortgage news, which is great fun. And I’m on X or Twitter at RC whelan.com. We have great fun. The comments for the blog, by the way are on Twitter. So come and come and visit.

Eric Chemi 55:37
Come and visit, Chris Whalen, I really appreciate the time good luck. I know you’re working

Chris Whalen 55:40
Happy New Year

Eric Chemi 55:41
on Basel three. Endgame.

Chris Whalen 55:43
Please

Eric Chemi 55:44
get back to that.

Chris Whalen 55:46
Yeah. I’m going to the beach I’ll see you soon.

Eric Chemi 55:49
See you soon. Enjoy it, Enjoy it Chris. Thank you so much. Thanks again to my guest today. Chris Whalen. And thank you all for watching and joining us here on Wealthion. And if you like this content, please make sure to like subscribe, share, forward, comment, all of those things, really help get this out there to as many people as possible. And of course, if you’re trying to figure out your family’s finances, your investments, you can go to Wealthion.com There’s a short form there. We can connect you with investment professionals that we endorse that we vetted. If you want to have a conversation, that’s great. There’s no obligation, there’s no cost. There’s no commitment. You can just have the conversation, see if they’re right for you that’s again at Wealthion.com To free public service that we provide, trying to help as many people as possible. And of course, you know, check out this show with Anthony Scarramucci speak up with Anthony Scarramucci. It’s a live Call-in show. That’s every Friday at 11am. Eastern. And if you want to submit questions for that show, you can go to Wealthion.com forward slash ask Anthony and we’ll answer your questions on the program. Thanks again for watching Wealthion. I’m Eric Chemi. We’ll see you next time.