In Episode 266 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with financial historian, journalist, and author Edward Chancellor. For the last twenty years, Chancellor has been arguably known best for his book, “Devil Take the Hindmost,” which is a fantastic history of the last 400 years of financial speculation. Yet, that streak may be soon coming to an end with the publication tomorrow of his latest book, “The Price of Time,” an absolutely brilliant philosophical exploration of interest and its essential role in valuing and directing the allocation of capital, labor, and resources in the economy over time. Interest rates have sometimes been described on this podcast and elsewhere as the “price of money.” While this definition is useful, it fails to capture the temporal dimension of interest rates and the role that they play in expanding the continuum of economic activity, cooperation, investment, and consumption beyond the immediate grasp of the present moment. The ability to accumulate capital in the form of money enables us to operate outside of entropy’s constraints—we aren’t limited in other words by the decomposition or decay of a sack of barley, a barrel of oil, or a concrete building. But in order to value that capital through both space and time, we need something more. And that something is interest: the price you pay to borrow money or the cost you charge to lend it over time. Over the last two decades the price of time has plummeted to levels never before seen in human history and with it have arrived a multiplicity of asset price bubbles, a reduction in productivity growth, rising wealth and income inequality, a discouragement of savings, a growth in supply chains, and an excessive amount of risk-taking encouraged by the acrobatics of yield-starved investors in search of decent return. In this excellent and timely conversation, you are going to learn about the history of interest and its historical role in promoting human cooperation, economic activity, and advancement. You are also going to learn about how interest is priced, where it comes from, and the difference between the so-called “natural rate” of interest and what central banks have claimed as their policy lever to control the scale, scope, and distribution of capital in society. In the second hour of our conversation which is available to premium subscribers only, Edward Chancellor and Demetri Kofinas apply the framework that they develop in the first part of the episode to help you understand where we find ourselves today, whether or not central banks and governments can indeed use their policy tools to fix the very problems that those tools have to help create, what some of those solutions and the path forward could look like, and what all of this means for you and your portfolio. You can access the full episode, transcript, and intelligence report to this week’s conversation by going directly to the episode page at HiddenForces.io and clicking on "premium extras." All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. 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 & 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 08/09/2022

In Episode 265 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Michael Howell. Michael is the CEO of CrossBorder Capital, a London-based, independent research and investment company that provides asset allocation and capital markets advice to institutional investors. This conversation is a natural follow-up to our recent episodes with Lev Menand on the shadow banking system and Eric Basmajian on economic cycles. Specifically, the credit cycle and its leading impact on the economy and asset prices. But this conversation with Michael also pulls directly from other episodes as well with guests like Michael Pettis on global trade and finance, Claudio Borio on financial instability, Brent Johnson on the Revenge of the Dollar, James Aitken on Digital Currency and the Pivot to Asia, Russel Napier on the New Economic Order and the Asian Financial Crisis, and of course, one of my absolute favorites, a conversation with Kevin Coldiron, Tim Lee, and Jamie Lee on the role of the US Dollar as an international funding currency and as the primary driver of recurring systemic crises in the international financial system. Global liquidity is a term that every single person working in finance and in financial media has not only heard of but has probably used at one point or another. And yet, if you were to ask most people what this term means or what it refers to they would be hard pressed to give you a clear or uniform answer. This is because the drivers of global liquidity, namely the financial and exchange rate relationships within and between countries and the determinants of cross-border flows of money, securities, goods and services, are constantly changing. In the process, they have become, in the words of Michael Howell, “the new weapons in the escalating Capital Wars between the U.S., Europe, and China,” the last of which has a vested interest in not only the long-term stability of the international financial system but perhaps even the eventual aim of displacing the Dollar in favor of the Yuan as the fulcrum around which international trade and commerce is eventually invoiced and credited The goal of today’s conversation is not only to help you gain a deeper appreciation for what global liquidity is and the geopolitical and economic forces driving it but to also help you understand how it impacts you and your portfolio directly through the outsized role that it has on shaping economic outcomes and asset prices. This comes at a time when this very liquidity is receding faster than at any point since the Great Financial Crisis and by some measures, even quicker. You can access the full episode, transcript, and intelligence report to this week’s conversation, along with the additional material provided by Michael Howell by going directly to the episode page at HiddenForces.io and clicking on "premium extras." All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. 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 & 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 08/02/2022

In Episode 264 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas publishes the contents of a call that he hosted on Twitter Spaces this past Tuesday evening only hours after Nancy Pelosi, the US Speaker of the House of Representatives arrived in Taiwan. The subject of the call concerns both the short and long-term consequences of Pelosi’s trip and whether or not the US is ready to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese naval blockade or invasion of the island by the People’s Liberation Army. Speakers Dmitri Alperovitch, Elbridge Colby, and Jamil N. Jaffer discuss how the US can prepare for this eventuality, the urgency of the task at hand, and the possibility and consequences of the US losing a war with China over Taiwan in the next few years. 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 & 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 08/02/2022

In Episode 263 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Eric Basmajian. Eric is an economic cycle analyst and the Founder of EPB Macro Research, an economics-based research firm focusing on inflection points in economic growth and the impact on asset prices. His research has been featured across major financial media outlets and he’s been kind enough to provide a sample of his latest cyclical trends monthly update report for premium subscribers to our super nerd tier that you can get through this week’s episode page on our website. This conversation is the latest in a series of episodes on markets and investing, with an especially strong focus this time on the macro economy, and in particular, the secular and cyclical trends in the rate of growth and inflation. Secular forces are things like demographics, debt-to-GDP levels, trends in globalization, and the regular and predictable doubling in computing power commonly referred to as Moore’s Law—long-term trends in other words that remain in place through multiple economic cycles. Cyclical trends on the other hand are the 6-18 month fluctuations in growth determined by things like income, production, consumption, and employment. We can anticipate changes in the direction and magnitude of these trends by relying on a variety of what are known as leading as well as coincident economic indicators, things you’ve probably heard of before like building permits, new manufacturing orders, non-farm payrolls, personal consumption, industrial production, etc. Understanding where you are in an economic cycle and what the long-term, secular forces are that are pulling you or pushing you in any particular direction is as important to investors as the weather and the ocean currents are to the navigator of a sailboat. They inform the allocation strategies and performance expectations for a variety of asset classes, business models, and policy choices over time. Today’s conversation will expose you to a framework for thinking about the macroeconomy that is empirical, data-oriented, and very much based in reality—one that you can use to forecast major economic inflection points and their resulting impact on asset prices, a valuable tool for anyone trying to manage his or her portfolio or make informed investment decisions. You can access the full episode, transcript, and intelligence report to this week’s conversation by going directly to the episode page at HiddenForces.io and clicking on "premium extras." All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. 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 & 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 07/26/2022

In Episode 262 of Hidden Forces, I (Demetri Kofinas) share an interview I recently gave on “The Breakdown” with Nathaniel Whittemore, but not before delivering an important message, which has to do with a new Hidden Forces community tier that we will be launching. I’m excited to announce that we will be launching a new Hidden Forces community tier where you'll be able to get immediate access to me, my thoughts, special content, etc., along with private events that will include opportunities to ask questions directly to my guests and to me in real-time. We are giving you a preview of that experience this coming Wednesday, August 3rd, from 6:30 PM — 8 PM EST when I will be hosting a live video Q&A over zoom. Anyone can join and ask me pretty much any question they want so long as it is relevant to the podcast. The zoom call is open to anyone but we are limiting the number of people who can join this time just to keep things manageable. You can secure your spot on the list by going to HiddenForces.io/events and registering right now. The title of the event is “Investing Between the Wars,” and while listeners are free to ask any question they like, the focus of the Q&A is on how the changing political and geopolitical landscape is affecting your life and investments. Indeed, this is the subject that Nathaniel Whittemore and I discussed in my recent appearance on “The Breakdown.” I shared some of my own views and perspectives on markets and geopolitics as well as how I’ve incorporated my macro views of the political economy into my own investment decisions. The Breakdown is a daily analysis podcast that explores themes in macroeconomics, bitcoin, geopolitics, and the big picture power shifts affecting the world. You can find it on any major podcast platform and at coindesk.com/podcasts and you can follow Nathaniel on Twitter at @NLW. You can access the transcript to this week’s conversation by going directly to the episode page at HiddenForces.io and clicking on "premium extras." All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. 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 & 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 07/18/2022

In Episode 261 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Elbridge Colby, co-founder and principal of The Marathon Initiative, an organization whose mission is to develop the diplomatic, military, and economic strategies that the United States will need to navigate a protracted era of great power competition. Colby has also served as US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Development and was the chief architect of the 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS), which was by some estimates the most significant revision of U.S. defense strategy since 9/11, if not since the end of the Cold War. This is a conversation about the national security challenges that Elbridge Colby believes we face as a country, their urgency, and what is needed in terms of practical changes to our strategic objectives, the organization of our national defense, what we prioritize, and perhaps most importantly, our sense of mission, unity, and national purpose. Kofinas and Colby spend the first hour laying out the nature and scope of these challenges as they pertain to the Chinese Communist Party in particular, and to the degree that it acts in unison with Chinese objectives, the Russian Federation as well. The second hour is broken into two parts, the first of which covers specifics on how to meet the challenge, while the second focuses on Taiwan where Elbridge makes the case for why he believes that an attack on the island nation by China is not only likely but may come much sooner than most pundits and military planners expect. The consequences of such an attack would not only be destabilizing for the current equilibrium in Asia, but could escalate into a global kinetic conflict with hypersonic missiles, space warfare, cyber-attacks, and God forbid, the use of nuclear weapons. Preventing such scenarios from unfolding should be at the very top of our list of national priorities. Today’s conversation is mean to help inform you about just how salient this threat is and what we can and perhaps should do about it. You can access the full episode, transcript, and intelligence report to this week’s conversation by going directly to the episode page at HiddenForces.io and clicking on "premium extras." All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. 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 & 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 07/19/2022

In Episode 260 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Rory Johnston. Rory is a widely quoted researcher and expert in global commodities markets. His work includes a variety of research and investment projects including his commodity market research platform at Commodity Context Dot Com, as well as both public market portfolio and private equity strategy at Price Street. This episode is for premium subscribers only and is part of an ongoing series of conversations that I’ve been curating with guests focused on investment themes and opportunities in the commodities complex. The goal of this conversation is to provide you with a more critical look at the supply side story in oil, refined products like gasoline and diesel, and to a lesser degree natural gas, including drivers of end-use demand for these commodities. The demand-side picture is much more difficult to project, as it requires assumptions about growth, monetary policy, and the further implementation of sanctions on Russian energy supplies. These are subjects we explored in recent episodes with Helen Thompson on Energy Geopolitics and Ian Bremmer on how to fight a geopolitical recession and are featured in the related tab on this week’s episode page on our website. Rory and Demetri also discuss some of the financial data compiled by Rory in his most recent Global Oil Data Deck including calendar spreads and speculative positioning in major crude contracts and how we can use that information to help us anticipate the direction of and volatility in oil prices going forward. For premium subscribers to our super nerd tier, Rory has provided you with an abridged version of his data deck for the month of July which publishes in full on his commodity context substack today. You can access the full episode and transcript, along with the abridged version of Rory’s Global Oil Data Deck by going directly to the episode page at HiddenForces.io and clicking on "premium extras." All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. 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 & 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 07/14/2022

In Episode 259 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Ryan Gingeras, a professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School and an expert on Turkish, Balkan, and Middle East history. Gingeras has authored six books on Turkish history and culture, including his forthcoming, “The Last Days of the Ottoman Empire,” which is scheduled for release by Penguin in October 2022. In recent years, Turkey has become an X-factor of sorts in global politics. Its president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has attracted the ire of liberal-minded politicians and his transactional political style has raised questions about Turkey’s dependability as a NATO ally and about its long-term commitment to the rules-based international order. This is obviously a concern for the United States and NATO, but there is perhaps no country for whom Turkey’s long-term orientation Westward carries more existential importance than Greece, which has been on the receiving end of escalating Turkish provocations and territorial violations of its internationally recognized maritime borders and airspace. This comes during a time when Turkish cooperation within NATO itself has become a bargaining chip of sorts that Ankara has used to further its own strategic objectives, as seen most recently in negations over Finish and Swedish membership. This conversation has two primary objectives. The first is to give you an understanding of the historical, political, and geostrategic forces responsible for driving Turkish foreign policy today, including the intellectual foundations for its more assertive, revanchist, and perhaps even expansionist ambitions—concepts and doctrines such as “strategic depth” and Mavi Vatan or “Blue Homeland,” which inform and explain much of Turkey’s policy in the broader Middle East, Africa, and the Aegean. The second objective is to expose you to how the Middle East, Europe, and North Africa could evolve territorially in a world without NATO or where the post-WWII liberal international order continues to degrade or comes apart entirely. While this has more immediate implications for Greece, it also risks altering the larger territorial landscape of Eurasia in ways that most people would have found unimaginable at the beginning of the 21st century. What this could mean for citizens in these territories, for the politicians responsible for making policy within the various countries affected, and for investors and businesses looking to put capital to work in them cannot be understated. You can access the full episode, transcript, and intelligence report to this week’s conversation by going directly to the episode page at HiddenForces.io and clicking on "premium extras." All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. 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 & 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 07/05/2022

In Episode 258 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Lev Menand, author of “The Fed Unbound: Central Banking in a Time of Crisis.” Menand is an associate professor of law at Columbia Law School who has worked as an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and as a senior advisor to both the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury and the Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions. He joins Demetri for an important and timely conversation about the US Dollar and the evolution of the international financial system into a kind of Frankenstein’s monster whose appendages and doppelgängers reach into the deepest recesses of the global economy. Dollar balances and dollar-based lending by institutions not regulated by the Federal Reserve—what we broadly refer to as the shadow banking system—have grown so large over the years that no one, not even the Fed, can actually quantify them. For most of us, awareness of just how dangerously complex the modern banking system has become was made clear fourteen years ago with the onset of what we now call “The Global Financial Crisis,” a supposedly once-in-a-lifetime event that almost repeated itself during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic when the Fed came to the rescue of markets to stop yet another financial panic that threatened to bring down the global financial system. Panics like these ultimately stem from a fear or inability on the part of financial counterparties to settle claims and honor liabilities. With the Fed now raising interest rates more aggressively than it has in almost thirty years the question that many investors, economists, and policymakers around the world should be asking themselves is “what is the likelihood that the events we experienced in 2008 and most recently in 2020 repeat themselves today?” Our objective in bringing you this conversation is to provide you with a foundational framework for understanding the forces responsible for driving crises of liquidity in the international dollar system during a time when those forces are growing stronger and stronger. In the process you are going to learn about the plumbing of the shadow banking system, the evolution of the eurodollar market, repos, money market funds, and so much more. The majority of that conversation takes place in the second hour of today’s episode which is available to premium subscribers only. You can access the full episode, transcript, and intelligence report to this week’s conversation by going directly to the episode page at HiddenForces.io and clicking on "premium extras." All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. 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 & 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 07/07/2022

In Episode 257 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Helen Thompson, author and Professor of Political Economy at the University of Cambridge. Thompson’s current research concentrates on the political economy of energy and the long history of the democratic, economic, and geopolitical disruptions of the twenty-first century, which she explores magisterially in her new book “Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century.”  For those of us who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, the nature of the world as we knew it to be only seemed to be getting better and better. The price of energy and the cost of capital kept getting cheaper, the world kept getting safer and more interconnected, and liberal democracy and free-market capitalism were seen as inevitable outcomes of the end of history. Today, all of that feels like it was almost a dream. The last two decades have brought a powerful tide of geopolitical, economic, and democratic shocks onto the world. Their fallout has led central banks to create over twenty-five trillion dollars of new money, brought about a new age of geopolitical competition, destabilized the Middle East, ruptured the European Union, and exposed old political fault lines in the United States--fault lines that seem to challenge even those of the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s when the specter of nuclear war and the trauma of violent riots and political assassinations cast a long shadow over the future of the Republic. This conversation between Helen Thompson and Demetri Kofinas endeavors to draw a line of continuity between those turbulent years and the present political moment as we try to imagine how a future situated in the long arch of human history with all its political challenges, economic imperatives, and destructive wars might unfold. It recounts three histories. One about geopolitics, one about the world economy, and one about western democracies, and explains how in the years of political disorder prior to the pandemic, the disruption in each became part of one big story, much of which originates in problems generated by fossil-fuel energies and our efforts to control them. And it explains why, as the green transition takes place, the longstanding predicaments that energy invariably shapes will remain firmly in place. You can access the full episode, transcript, and intelligence report to this week’s conversation by going directly to the episode page at HiddenForces.io and clicking on "premium extras." All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. 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 & 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 07/06/2022