The Bear Stearns Moment | Ben Hunt on How Private Credit Unravels

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Oct 19, 2025

Ben Hunt, founder of Epsilon Theory and Persean, dives into the hidden perils of private credit and its alarming parallels to the shadow banking system that sparked the 2008 crisis. He likens financial betrayals to Tessio from The Godfather, highlighting how broken trust can trigger systemic crises. The discussion reveals risks tied to opacity and hidden leverage, emphasizing how small defaults can cascade into larger issues. Ben also introduces innovative narrative-tracking tools that offer real-time insights into market dynamics and evolving investor behavior.

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ADVICE

Scrutinize Post-Shock Deal Pitches

Be skeptical of deals pitched after shocks and apply heightened scrutiny to counterparties and documentation.
Treat new "great deals" post-shock like potential betrayals and demand clearer information before participating.

ANECDOTE

Tessio Metaphor For Financial Betrayal

Ben compares First Brands and Tricolor to historic frauds like Madoff and Sam Bankman-Fried as betrayals of trust.
He warns that trusted insiders often bring "great deals" at the end to cover problems, mirroring Tessio's betrayal.

INSIGHT

Private Credit As Modern Shadow Banking

Alternative asset managers have become modern shadow banks optimized as flow machines that push loans through many steps for profit.
When trust breaks, informational asymmetry and intentional opacity make investors pull funding and create systemic risk.

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Ben Hunt returns to Excess Returns to break down the hidden risks building inside private credit and the parallels between today’s “alternative asset managers” and the shadow banking system that triggered the 2008 financial crisis. Using the Godfather’s Tessio as a metaphor for betrayal and broken trust, Ben explains how opacity, leverage, and narrative collapse can turn small defaults into systemic crises. He and Matt Zeigler explore what’s really happening beneath the surface of private markets, how common knowledge shifts shape investor behavior, and how Perscient Pro’s “storyboards” and “semantic signatures” help track the narratives driving markets in real time.

Main topics covered

Why Ben believes we’re at a “trust-breaking” moment similar to 2007
The Godfather analogy and what frauds reveal about human behavior
How private credit has evolved into today’s “shadow banking” system
Flow machines, hidden leverage, and why opacity is intentional
The dangers of informational asymmetry between investors and lenders
How broken trust creates chain reactions in financial systems
The link between narrative collapse and liquidity crises
Common knowledge, crowd reactions, and market psychology
Doom loops between Wall Street and the real economy
How Perscient Pro tracks financial narratives using semantic signatures
Why gold’s current rally is about safety, not debasement
What investors should monitor next in credit, housing, and macro narratives

Timestamps
0:00 Hidden leverage and the trust problem
1:04 Introduction to Ben Hunt and Epsilon Theory
2:12 The Tessio analogy – betrayal and the structure of fraud
6:10 How private credit became today’s shadow banking system
10:55 Flow machines and why opacity is intentional
14:48 Trust breaks and the “funding stops first” dynamic
18:35 The Biden “common knowledge” moment explained
21:00 What happens when narratives collapse
24:26 Apollo, asymmetric information, and shorting First Brands
28:00 Hidden leverage and the domino effects of default
33:40 The “doom loop” between Wall Street and the real economy
39:10 Why Silicon Valley Bank was different
44:18 What a “run on Wall Street” could look like
48:00 Perscient Pro and tracking financial storyboards
53:32 Semantic signatures and narrative detection
57:10 Housing, inflation, and gold storyboards
1:00:48 Where to follow Ben Hunt and learn more about Perscient Pro