Transcripts
Erik: Joining me now is Jesse Felder, publisher of The Felder Report and former hedge fund portfolio manager. Jesse, it's great to have you back.
Listeners, Jesse did prepare a chart deck to accompany today's interview, you'll find the download link in your research roundup email. If you don't have a research roundup email, it means you're not registered yet. Just go to our homepage macrovoices.com, look for the red button above Jesse's picture that says, "looking for the downloads".
Jesse, great to have you back. I've been starting all of our interviews asking people about boy, so many smart people have turned into inflationist in the last year or so where do you stand? Are you an inflationista as Louis-Vincent Gave called it or are you still in the deflationista camp?
Jesse: I am in the inflationista camp and, Erik, I gotta say, it's great to be back. You know, it was, I think a little over a year ago when we last spoke here. And you know, right before the COVID crash, and it's kind of been an interesting 13 months since then. But yeah, I am in the inflation camp, I think that we're going to see, you know, to me, one of the things I look at is the, you know, just prices paid components of a lot of these things that we've seen, you know, ISM services came out this week. But businesses of all stripes are all basically complaining about rising cost pressures. And I think we're seeing that in tons of different sectors, from manufacturing to restaurants. I think we're gonna see some pretty strong wage inflation over the next few months, which is one of the things that can be a driver of inflation going forward.
Erik: Joining me now is Steven Van Metre from stevenvanmeter.com also the host of his own macro YouTube channel but most interesting to us at MacroVoices as perhaps the last deflationists standing. Not actually the only one Steven, but you're one of few so why don't we start with just the big picture. You know, a lot of us myself included have really come around to a view that we're looking at a shift towards secular inflation. Different people think different things about how far off it is. There aren't too many of you guys left that don't see that way at all so tell me where you want to start. Either with why deflation or why not inflation?
Steven: Yeah you know Erik, I think it's easy to see why we should have inflation right. I mean housing prices are up, stock markets up, treasuries up, crude oils up, i mean food prices are up. I mean it's hard not to think that we're going to see this secular rise of inflation and yet we continue to see these deflationary pressures on the economy and people say well that will go away as soon as the reopening is done.
Once people get back to work but yet when you when you look at this from a monetary perspective and when you really understand how quantitative easing works and its effect on the economy. What you find out is we're in a liquidity trap and even worse the fed created the liquidity trap and the problem with liquidity traps is they're disinflationary and if they're let run too long, they become outright deflationary and so when you understand that we're in a liquidity trap, you realize that these disinflationary pressures aren't going away and the biggest risk we have then is turning into deflation.
Erik: Joining me now is billionaire financier Robert Friedland, best known as the founder and CEO of Ivanhoe Mining. But perhaps more relevantly to this conversation, Robert is also the chairman and CEO of Ivanhoe Capital Corporation. The private venture capital and family office enterprise, which invests in a lot of fascinating technologies that I want to talk to Robert about today in this interview.
Listeners, if you didn't catch it in the introduction with Patrick Ceresna. Please be sure to first listen to my two interviews with Robert on the subject of greening the global economy on the Smarter Markets podcast, because what we're going to do in today's interview is to expound on that conversation. If you didn't hear that conversation, today's conversation isn't going to make sense.
Robert, let's start not with those topics. But with you as an investor because your mind absolutely fascinates me. You wowed our Smarter Markets audience with the story of Camel Polo in the snow on your albino racing camel. So we kind of have this vision of Robert Friedland as the camel riding mining executive who sounds like an Indiana Jones kind of character. But you were one of the principal investors and creators of satellite radio Sirius and XM Satellite Radio. So I'm just trying to imagine how does a mining executive sit down one day and say, Hey, I think I'll take advantage of advancements in MOSFET transistors and, you know, invent Sirius XM radio? How do you know about all these things, and thorium reactors and all the other things that we're going to talk about today?
Guests:
Josh Crumb- Founder & CEO, Abaxx Technologies Inc.
Joe Raia- Chief Commercial Officer, Abaxx Exchange
Annoucer: [00:00:00] This is a special edition of MacroVoices with hedge fund manager, Erik Townsend. The premier financial podcast, targeting professional finance, high net-worth individuals, family offices, and other sophisticated investors. Now for this special edition of MacroVoices, here's Erik Townsend.
Erik Townsend: [00:00:29] MacroVoices Spotlight episode six was recorded on March 11th, 2021. I'm Erik Townsend.
When we had Kyle Bass on MacroVoices and talked about Singapore really becoming the heir apparent to Hong Kong as Hong Kong loses some of its independence from China. Kyle brought up Abaxx Technologies, a company that both Kyle and I have invested in. And when I asked him about it, he said, look, you really have to get Josh Crumb, the CEO of Abaxx on your show to talk about all the different dimensions of this because, as Kyle put it, he said, look, frankly, I invested because they're doing something cool in Singapore with natural gas and because Josh Crumb is involved and frankly, Josh Crumb's the only guy who really understands all the dimensions of this in his head. So we're following up on that advice.
Erik: Joining me now is JDI Research founder Juliette Declercq, who is perhaps best known for her incredible graphs and charts. So you're not going to want to miss the download for this week's interview.
Registered users will find the download link in your research roundup email. If you don't have a research roundup email, it means you're not registered yet. Just go to our homepage macrovoices.com. Look for the red button that says looking for the downloads just above Juliette's picture and immediately below the green donate button.
Bonsoir Juliette! It's great to have you back. I want to start with a question. We're asking everyone which is secular inflation, is it really about to happen? Some people say this is the late 1960s. We're about to have a massive inflation driven by all of the government stimulus and everything that's expected. And frankly, at this point, I really hope you're a deflationist because we've been looking for one.
MACRO VOICES is presented for informational and entertainment purposes only. The information presented in MACRO VOICES should NOT be construed as investment advice. Always consult a licensed investment professional before making important investment decisions. The opinions expressed on MACRO VOICES are those of the participants. MACRO VOICES, its producers, and hosts Erik Townsend and Patrick Ceresna shall NOT be liable for losses resulting from investment decisions based on information or viewpoints presented on MACRO VOICES.
