The Julia La Roche Show

Brent Johnson, the CEO of Puerto Rico-based wealth management firm Santiago Capital and the creator of the Dollar Milkshake Theory, joins Julia on episode 22.  Brent’s view is that we’re heading for a currency crisis. The Dollar Milkshake Theory is a framework Brent developed to explain how a sovereign debt and currency crisis might play out. He explained how the world was flooded with liquidity thanks to extraordinary monetary policies following the Global Financial Crisis. The Dollar Milkshake is a simplified way to demonstrate how capital — all of the liquidity that makes up the “milkshake” — would flee the rest of the world and get sucked up by the U.S. Dollar (the straw) and U.S.-based markets creating a myriad of problems globally.   During this conversation, Brent explains his Dollar Milkshake Theory, where he thinks we are within that framework, and why the U.S. Dollar’s explosion to the upside could cause problems to pop up worldwide. Elsewhere, Brent discussed how to navigate a currency crisis, the case for investing in gold, why everyone should have cash, and his concerns about bitcoin.  0:00 Intro/background 1:25 Macro views, focus on currencies  2:41 Explanation of the Dollar Milkshake Theory   6:39 Where are we in the Dollar Milkshake framework?  10:26 What could be the endgame?  13:16 Why should individuals care about the implications of currencies? 19:39 How currency problems will create contagion  26:37 Weaponization of the Dollar  33:17 Views on The Fed  37:55 How to navigate a currency crisis  41:29 Investing in gold  43:52 Advice for CEOs and companies navigating currency headwinds  45:28 Everybody should have cash  47:42 A complicated relationship with Bitcoin  50:00 What a new monetary system could look like 53:41 The Dollar Milkshake Theory doesn’t have a happy ending…  56:23 Think for yourself but think about what’s going to happen

Best-selling author Jim Rickards joins Julia La Roche on episode 21 of the podcast to discuss his outlook on why a severe recession is coming and how to prepare for it. Rickards is a New York Times bestselling author of Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis and several other best-sellers, including The New Great Depression, Aftermath, The Road to Ruin, Death of Money, and The New Case for Gold. He is the author upcoming book Sold Out: How Broken Supply Chains, Surging Inflation, and Political Instability Will Sink the Global Economy. An investment advisor, lawyer, inventor, and economist, Rickards has held senior positions at Citibank, Long-Term Capital Management, and Caxton Associates. He is also the Editor of Strategic Intelligence, a widely-read financial newsletter. In this episode, Rickards outlines his thesis for why a severe recession is coming. According to Rickards, "we're going to wake up this winter with a severe recession, high unemployment, and a much lower stock market." He notes that the stock market is "starting to get the message," and those who believe in the Fed pivot narrative are missing two huge fallacies. Rickards also warns on the dire debt situation in the U.S., with the debt-to-GDP ratio exceeding 130%, well past the critical threshold. As Rickards notes, the U.S. is now "well past the point where you can borrow your way to growth, or you can borrow your way out of a debt crisis, and we're heading for a debt crisis." Elsewhere, Rickards shares his views on why inflation will turn to deflation, a "central banker's worse nightmare" and "pure poison" for debtors. He also details his outlook on the U.S. dollar and weighs in on currency fluctuations globally. 0:00 Intro 0:44 Views on the global economy 1:35 U.S. ‘almost certainly’ in a recession 3:08 What’s coming is a ‘very severe’ recession 3:43 Supply chains breaking down 4:50 Bloated inventories, slashing prices 5:15 Fed tightening rates into weakness 5:45 The stock market is starting to get the message 6:23 The Fed pivot crowd face huge fallacies in that narrative 10:40 Bottom might not be until late 2023 11:40 We’re going to wake up with winter with a severe recession, high unemployment, and a much lower stock market 12:30 Explanation of financial crises and recessions 19:30 Recession may be worse than 2008 21:01 Odds of a financial crisis are ‘uncomfortably high’ 22:26 Fed raising rates to curb inflation will be effective at a ‘very high cost’ 24:02 Deflation/disinflation coming down the tracks 24:46 2 types of inflation explained 29:16 The impact of debt is like an extremely powerful glacier 35:40 Thoughts on MMT 44:30 Debt does matter 45:05 Deflation is ‘pure poison’ when it comes to the debt-to-GDP ratio 51:09 Thoughts on U.S. Dollar, currency fluctuations 58:46 Diversifying your portfolio

Josh Brown, co-founder and CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management, a New York City-based investment advisory firm managing over $2.7 billion, joins Julia La Roche on episode 20. Josh, a frequent commentator on CNBC, is the author of three books, including Backstage Wall Street and the popular financial blog, The Reformed Broker. In this episode, Josh shares his journey from a retail stockbroker launching a financial blog during the 2008 crisis to building and scaling an RIA. For Josh, writing changed the course of his career. Writing is what connected Josh with his firm's co-founder, and creating content through blogs and podcasts has been the sole driver of the firm’s clients. These days, Josh has slowed the frequency of his blog posts, but when he writes it's an accumulation of ideas he's been pondering, and the latest blog he dropped on Sunday, Oct. 2, though, called “You Weren’t Supposed To See That,” went viral. In 3,400 words, Josh examines “the greatest economic experiment” of the last three years, from the shutdowns, remote work enabled by technology, the stimulus, appreciation in stocks and housing, the emergence of digital art and SPACs, an increase in new businesses and LLCs, used car prices going up, household debt shrinking, household net worth rising, squandering of stimulus checks, and so on, all resulting in the worst inflation in 40 years. As Josh highlights on the podcast, all of this revealed “a dark truth about the American dream.” As Josh puts it in the blog, “Widespread prosperity, it turns out, is incompatible with the American Dream. The only way our economy works is when there are winners and losers. If everyone’s a winner, the whole thing fails. That’s what we learned at the conclusion of our experiment. You weren’t supposed to see that. Now the genie is out of the bottle. For one brief shining moment, everyone had enough money to pay their bills and the financial freedom to choose their own way of life. “And it broke the f*****g economy in half.” Timestamps:  0:00 Intro 2:16 Retail stockbroker to blogger 3:59 Lessons from broker days 7:08 Blogging during the financial crisis 9:53 Writing is essential for investors 13:18 Teaming up with Barry Ritholtz 15:37 Content is the sole driver of clients 19:31 “You weren’t supposed to see that” 23:50 A dark truth about the American dream 25:11 Legal immigration is one solution 28:44 Views on the “American Dream” 32:30 Implications for younger Americans 35:42 Where does the blame lie? 37:26 Mass prosperity wasn’t the goal 38:15 Reactions to the viral blog post 40:12 This recession is necessary to prevent the next recession. - Fed policy, literally 41:35 Why @Downtown doesn’t Tweet often 48:06 Where do we go from here?

Joining Julia La Roche on episode 19 of the podcast is R. Martin (“Marty”) Chavez, a partner and vice chair of Sixth Street Capital and a former Goldman Sachs executive. Before joining Sixth Street, a global investment firm with more than $60 billion in assets under management, Chavez served in various senior roles at Goldman Sachs, including Chief Information Officer, overseeing the firm’s 9,000 engineers; Chief Financial Officer; and global co-head of the firm’s Securities Division. Chavez was also a partner and member of the Goldman Sachs management committee. In this episode, Chavez shares his background, growing up in a large family in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His parents strongly emphasized education, and as Chavez’s mother put it, he had to “work twice as hard to get half as far.” As a student, Chavez excelled in math, and by the 7th grade, he was taking college math courses at the University of New Mexico. That’s also where he discovered his love for computers. A Stanford Ph.D., Chavez shares his unlikely path from Silicon Valley to Wall Street. He was the first openly gay employee at Goldman Sachs in 1993 and was among the most senior Latinos on Wall Street. Chavez is widely recognized for helping transform the Wall Street trading business into a software business, revolutionizing how capital moves and works. He is also known for bringing the front and back offices together. The episode delves into Chavez’s views on the future of finance, his thesis on how software ate finance, his thoughts on regulating fintech, and the powerful trend of dematerialization. 0:00 Intro 0:23 Growing up in Albuquerque, New Mexico 4:15 Education is the answer 6:40 Harvard sophomore at age 16 8:00 Early work on the protein folding problem 10:00 Creating a ‘digital twin' with software  12:10 Focus was on AI, not finance 16:00 A ‘free trip’ to NYC from Goldman 17:17 First openly gay employee at Goldman 19:13 ‘Just being me’ 22:50 Building trust and connectedness with colleagues 23:48 Leaving Goldman in 1997, choosing sobriety 25:35 Launching a startup before the dot-com bubble 28:30 The call from Gary Cohn 30:20 A vow of silence and cleaning toilets in a monastery 31:50 Evolution of tech at Goldman 34:04 Connecting with clients in Spanish 36:00 How software ate finance 40:50 Application Programming Interface (API) explained 44:10 Same number of people, different skills 46:27 future of fintech is banks 50:14 Digital assets, and the powerful trend of dematerialization

Investor and entrepreneur Dave Friedberg (@friedberg), the CEO of The Production Board and co-host/“Bestie” on The All-In Podcast, joined Julia La Roche on today’s episode for a wide-ranging conversation. Friedberg was born in South Africa and moved to Los Angeles with his family at age 6. Friedberg studied astrophysics and UC Berkley. He joined Google months before its initial public offering working in corporate development. At the end of 2006, Friedberg left Google to start The Climate Corporation, a software company focused on agriculture. Monsanto acquired the Climate Corporation in 2013 for around $1 billion.  In the episode, Friedberg shares his struggles raising venture capital for The Climate Corporation and later rapidly iterating and evolving the business model and product. According to Friedberg, three predictors for a startup’s success — grit, bias to action, and narrative — are all traits he looks for in making investments today. Friedberg started The Production Board, a holding company that creates and invests in agriculture, food, human health, life sciences, and biomanufacturing businesses. A core tenet of The Production Board focuses on decentralizing industrial processes to reinvent how we make and consume things as a species, from clothing, materials, plastics, food, and more. Friedberg sees a tremendous opportunity to deploy technologies such as biomanufacturing, automation, 3-D printing, or additive manufacturing to modularize and decentralize production, which benefits the planet and serves human needs. One example is Cana, a molecular beverage printer that allows consumers to turn water into soda, juice, coffee, and tea at home using a flavor cartridge without all the CO2 emissions that span the existing supply chains. Elsewhere, Friedberg shared his views on how we can achieve free, abundant energy. He predicts terrestrial nucleosynthesis could drive the greatest source of value and wealth creation in the 22nd century, and he extrapolates what this might mean for civilization.  0:00 Intro 0:30 Origin story 2:18 Friedberg’s interest in science 3:56 Lessons in entrepreneurship 7:15 Predictors of startup success 8:15 Building ‘grit’ in business 10:05 Importance of narrative 12:35 Strong storytellers more likely to succeed 14:14 Everything is learnable 18:42 Macro view of reimagining earth 25:45 Why anti-consumerism is dumb 29:30 Cana, the molecular beverage printer 32:15 Decentralization in media expanding to physical goods 33:45 Creators’ products will win against traditional products 39:58 Starbucks the first personalized consumer products company 42:30 Abundant free energy 53:45 From laborers to knowledge workers to narrators 1:00:34 Thoughts on UBI 1:04:55 Why is there fear around new technology? 1:06:03 Implications of solving the protein folding problem

Legendary investor and “adventure capitalist” Jim Rogers joins Julia La Roche on this episode for a wide-ranging conversation from the economy, markets, and investing to seeking adventure and lessons for younger generations.  In this episode, Julia and Jim revisit his Guinness World Record adventures, including his motorcycle ride across six continents in the early 90s and his journey across 116 countries in a custom-made yellow Mercedes convertible at the turn of the century.  In the conversation, Jim shares his views on the global macro economy and markets. The 79-year-old investor predicts that the next bear market will be “the worst” in his lifetime because of the explosion in debt.  Elsewhere, Jim weighs in on debt, inflation, the U.S. dollar, Bitcoin, commodities, agriculture, and China. He also imparts lessons for the younger generations.  0:00 Seeking adventure  2:22 Lessons learned traveling the world  4:30 How traveling shaped Rogers’ investing  6:30 Alabama to Wall Street  9:06 Working with Soros  10:00 October 19, 1987  12:15 Questioning everything  16:20 Macro outlook  18:15 “Worst bear market” in life  20:30 Longer-term consequences of debt  23:36 Outlook for the U.S. Dollar  25:19 Prescriptions for the U.S.  26:07 Thoughts on Bitcoin  27:50 Protecting yourself from inflation  30:00 View on agriculture  31:48 Secular trends  34:06 Investing opportunities  35:50 Bond Bubble  37:17 Short-selling  40:25 China  43:20 Lessons in life, investing  49:00 Views on education  52:40 Thoughts on the future of the world 

Billionaire tech titan Marc Benioff, the founder and CEO of Salesforce, joins Julia La Roche on a special episode at Dreamforce, the software and cloud giant's annual technology conference in San Francisco.  This year's Dreamforce attracted 40,000 attendees, making it the most significant event in San Francisco since the COVID pandemic. Benioff shared that the event brought in an estimated $40 million to the local economy, giving a much-needed "big shot in the arm" to the city. With sparsely populated offices, the San Francisco native CEO made a case for companies choosing San Francisco to host large events and conferences instead of places like Las Vegas. The conversation also touched upon the homelessness situation in San Francisco. As San Francisco's largest private employer, Benioff supported the passage of Proposition in 2018, which levied a 0.5% tax on the city's largest companies to combat the homelessness crisis. During the conversation, he called for institutionalizing affordable housing in the U.S. and for more mental health and addiction treatment programs. Benioff started Salesforce in 1999 as a pioneer in software-as-a-service (SaaS) and customer relationship management (CRM). Since then, it's become the largest enterprise software company and customer relationship management (CRM) company globally. The company is expected to do $31 billion in annual revenue this year and aims to hit $50 billion in the fiscal year 2026. While at Dreamforce, Benioff unveiled the company's newest product, Salesforce Genie, the first real-time CRM. Since its inception, Salesforce has integrated philanthropy into its business, primarily with its 1-1-1 model, where the company donates 1% of its equity, product, and employee time to charity. Benioff discussed some of the focus areas, including the environment through reforestation and adopting public schools. He also shared some of the biggest influences in his life and business and advice for next-generation entrepreneurs.  0:00 The Great Reunion  1:38 Future of Work  2:57 Quit Quitting  4:42 Views on the Economy  5:56 Salesforce Genie  7:32 Talk to Your Customers  9:02 $50B Goal  10:03 Ecopreneur Revolution  11:40 Public Education  14:34 San Francisco  17:47 Influences  21:54 Advice for Entrepreneurs 

Activist short-seller Dan David, the founder of Wolfpack Research and host of the “I Hung Up On Warren Buffett” podcast, joins Julia La Roche on today’s episode. Dan is best known for uncovering frauds in Chinese companies listed on U.S. exchanges. In this episode, Julia and Dan discuss his journey from being a long-only investor to an activist short-seller exposing frauds. Dan delves into his process of uncovering fraudulent companies, from deploying a tea salesperson to inquire how many employees were at a plant to posting video cameras to monitor truck traffic. Dan also details the involvement of the U.S. banks and law firms in these frauds that impacted millions of everyday Americans’ retirement and investment accounts. Dan, who has been sued for $250 million, breaks the merits of short-selling and the importance of Freedom of Speech. He also shares what he's focused on today.  0:00 Intro/ journey into short-selling 3:55 Carson Block’s Orient Paper short report 5:22 The pervasiveness of Chinese stock frauds 7:28 How U.S. banks, law firms enabled stock fraud 9:30 Why frauds targeted U.S. investors 11:08 U.S. banks involvement 13:31 Thousands of people involved 14:20 How the fraud worked 17:16 An example of uncovering a fraud 22:19 Thoughts on “The China Hustle” film 26:00 Sino-Forest fraud 28:00 Orient Paper 30:40 Why we “won this round” 33:10 Sohn Conference in Hong Kong 35:50 U.S./China geopolitical tensions 40:30 Short-selling 46:00 Freedom of Speech  49:22 Hanging up on Buffett 56:12 Opportunities today 

Nik Bhatia is a financial researcher and Adjunct Professor of Finance and Business Economics at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business, where he teaches Applied Finance in Fixed Income Securities. He is the author of the best-seller Layered Money: From Gold and Dollars to Bitcoin and Central Bank Digital Currencies. He currently writes The Bitcoin Layer, a research publication on Substack. In this episode, he discusses the younger generation's interest in Bitcoin and digital assets. He also dives into monetary history and some of the most important takeaways. Nik takes a global macro approach to Bitcoin analysis as a former bond trader and rates analyst. He expects the U.S. dollar “will remain King Dollar for decades to come.” Moreover, he thinks Bitcoin won’t break the dollar and will coexist with the dollar system. 0:00 Intro 3:00 Teaching at USC 7:00 Students embracing bitcoin 11:00 Monetary History 17:50 Views on the U.S. Dollar 23:29 Protecting yourself from a broken dollar system 31:00 Inflation and possible path for monetary policy

Ben Hunt, the author of Epsilon Theory and co-founder of Second Foundation Partners, joins Julia La Roche to discuss narratives and how they shape everything from financial markets to politics.  Ben’s Epsilon Theory is a newsletter read by over 100,000 investors and allocators that examines markets through the lenses of game theory and history and provides novel insights into market dynamics.  In this conversation, Ben details his focus in the investment world on examining unstructured data, which includes “the words that we read and the messages that we hear.” He explains that whether it’s in investing or politics, once you start to understand underlying narratives and story arcs, you begin to see them everywhere.  Ben also discussed how narratives are pervasive in the media and his approach to his content diet. He also outlined his “Fiat News” concept and how narratives get “weaponized.”  Elsewhere, Ben, who has written in praise of Bitcoin, explained how Wall Street co-opted the narratives surrounding the cryptocurrency, and it’s now “just another table at the Wall Street Casino.”  Finally, Ben discussed polarization and how American politics is approaching an “event horizon” that it might not be able to escape.  0:00 Intro/ Ben’s background  4:54 Unstructured data    10:02 Why don’t we recognize narratives/stories?  13:40 Michael Crichton’s Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect  17:30 Ben’s content diet  22:09 ‘Surviving’ in the environment  24:23 ‘Fiat News’  30:10 Weaponized narratives  35:21 The story of Bitcoin 40:16 Wall Street co-opted Bitcoin  45:39 Pervasive political conflict 52:22 How to protect yourself from political crisis  Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/frQ5SPKQMb4