Get the edge with Hidden Forces where media entrepreneur and financial analyst Demetri Kofinas gives you access to the people and ideas that matter, so you can ...
National Capitalism & Death of the International Monetary System | Russell Napier
In Episode 392 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with author, investor, and financial historian Russell Napier, about how to navigate a seminal transition in the global trade and monetary order. This episode aims to provide you with the tools to understand, value, and manage the assets, exposures, and risks in your portfolios and to capitalize on opportunities that come along only once every hundred years. In the first hour, Demetri and Russell Napier discuss the origins of the non-system that came to shape international trade and finance in the decades after the breakdown of the Bretton Woods international system of fixed exchange rates. They discuss the de-pegging of the RMB from the USD, the closing of the gap between the discount rate and the growth rate in developed economies, and the implications of America’s escalating economic war against China. In the second hour, which is available to premium subscribers only, Russell Napier and Kofinas focus most of their time on the implications of this breakdown in the international trade and monetary system for investors. They discuss how developed world governments are likely to repress capital, what you want to own in such a world, what you don’t want to own, and how to tell the difference. They also discuss what a new Chinese monetary order might look like, which countries would participate, and how such a system would build off China’s efforts to digitize the Yuan and create a Chinese-built digital payments infrastructure that extends beyond China’s borders as part of the Digital Silk Road initiative. They also discuss the prospects for a strategic Bitcoin fund, the use of stablecoins as an extension of Dollar hegemony, and the fate of the Euro in a world torn between Beijing and Washington. You can subscribe to our premium content and access our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports at HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, access to special research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners, you can also do that on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces, you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | YouTube | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify Subscribe to our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/ Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe and Support the Podcast at https://hiddenforces.io Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 11/27/2024
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56:47
The End of the German Economic Miracle | Wolfgang Münchau
In Episode 391 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Wolfgang Münchau, the director and co-founder of Eurointelligence and the author of a phenomenal new book about post-WWII Germany, the rise and fall of the German economy, its industrial sector, and the end of what he dubs “The German Miracle.” Wolfgang Münchau and Demetri spend the first hour of this episode laying the foundation to help listeners understand how Germany became the economic and financial juggernaut that we have known it to be throughout the 1990s and most of the 21st century. They discuss the two pillars of the German economy, the supercharging of its industrial growth model during the period of globalization and unipolarity, and the cultural, technological, and geopolitical sources of its economic decline. In the second hour, Kofinas and Münchau zero in on the ten structural sources of weakness for the German economy, including the German capital model and banking system, a corporatism that misaligns incentives between the interests of politicians and those of the economy, the fiscal doomsday machine in the form of Germany’s debt brake, a radicalizing electorate, and a political mindset among German elite that treats geopolitical risk as an economic externality to be safely discounted or ignored entirely. You can subscribe to our premium content and access our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports at HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, access to special research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners, you can also do that on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces, you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | YouTube | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify Subscribe to our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/ Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe and Support the Podcast at https://hiddenforces.io Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 11/19/2024
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52:08
De-banking, Censorship, and the Right to Die | Rupa Subramanya
In Episode 390 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Rupa Subramanya, a journalist at the Free Press, about the de-banking of political dissidents, censorship, and the “right to die.” Rupa first came on Demetri’s radar for the work she has done writing about what is known as “de-banking:” the closure of people's or organizations' bank accounts by financial institutions that perceive the account holders to pose a financial, legal, regulatory, or reputational risk to the organization. They speak extensively about her work in this area, along with her writings about political censorship of conservative voices and the right-to-die movement in the Netherlands and Canada, between the first and second hours. You can subscribe to our premium content and access our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports at HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, access to special research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners, you can also do that on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces, you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | YouTube | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify Subscribe to our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/ Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe and Support the Podcast at https://hiddenforces.io Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 10/30/2024
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58:46
Why the Fed Risks Losing Control of the Bond Market | Andy Constan
In Episode 389 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Andy Constan, the founder and proprietor of Damped Spring Advisors about why he believes the Federal Reserve is at risk of losing the long-end of the bond market, which would lead to a reacceleration of inflation and a hard landing for the economy. Andy and Demetri spend the first hour discussing the subject of a recent letter he published in which he warns that the Federal Reserve, by continuing to lower interest rates and ease monetary policy, could cause a sell-off in long-bonds and a rise in term premia, paradoxically tightening financial conditions while intending to ease them. They further discuss Treasury issuance, management of the Fed’s balance sheet, the weighted average maturity of assets in the central bank’s portfolio, and how conditions in the U.S. economy measure against the Fed’s summary of economic projections. In the second hour, Kofinas and Constan dig into the government’s finances, its fiscal picture, and how Trump’s election may exacerbate or alleviate trends that have been in place for decades. They also discuss equity markets, the broadening of the equity rally beyond the Magnificent Seven that’s been underway this year, earnings expectations for these companies, whether they’re elevated or conservative, and how we should go about valuing them. You can subscribe to our premium content and access our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports at HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, access to special research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners, you can also do that on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces, you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | YouTube | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify Subscribe to our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/ Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe and Support the Podcast at https://hiddenforces.io Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 11/11/2024
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46:26
Semiconductors, Tariffs, & Chip Restrictions Under Trump | Chris Miller
In Episode 388 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with semiconductor expert Chris Miller about the state and future of the semiconductor industry in the context of Trump’s 2024 U.S. electoral victory, with all its implications for industrial policy, defense spending, tariffs, export controls, trade wars, and much more. This conversation is a deep-dive into the semiconductor supply chain. Kofinas and Miller discuss how money is currently being allocated under the CHIPS and Science Act, the progress being made in domestic U.S. semiconductor fabrication, the challenges facing TSMC’s Arizona facility, and the troubles at Intel. They also take a hard look at the outcomes resulting from the U.S. semiconductor export and end-use controls implemented against China, how effective or ineffective they’ve been, and ways to improve them. They also assess China’s own efforts at building out its domestic chip ecosystem and some of the loopholes that Chinese companies are systematically exploiting in order to become fully independent of and eventually overtake Western chipmakers and equipment manufacturers. They discuss the three largest limiting factors to scaling AI data centers, the national security threat posed by Chinese companies leapfrogging their U.S. competitors in the race toward AGI, and much more. You can subscribe to our premium content and access our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports at HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, access to special research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners, you can also do that on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces, you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | YouTube | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify Subscribe to our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/ Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe and Support the Podcast at https://hiddenforces.io Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 11/06/2024
Get the edge with Hidden Forces where media entrepreneur and financial analyst Demetri Kofinas gives you access to the people and ideas that matter, so you can build financial security and always stay ahead of the curve.