Quantitative Tightening Is Over! We Can MOON Now

0:00Hello, everyone. Quantitative easing is back. There's turmoil at Apple, and we're going to break the impact of foreign workers in the U.S. economy. All that and more today, we're live from the desk of Anthony Pompliano.

0:22Before we get into today's episode, I need your help. We currently have 40 ,218 subscribers, but my goal is to get to 1 million. Hit the subscribe button and let's get into it today. All right, ladies and gentlemen, quantitative tightening is over. QT is gone. Sayonara. See you later. That means QE is back. Quantitative easing, easy monetary policy. They are going to flood the economy with money. They're going to do it with lower interest rates. Jeff Park, chief investment officer at ProCap Financial, he came on and he explained to me, what do you think is going to happen? What's the impact for market and asset prices?

0:56Take a listen to Jeff's thoughts here. I think QT ending on December 1st is historic. And it was well telegraphed, so no one should be surprised that it ended. But I think it's historic because in a way, it really, really signals the beginning of a new era of what the role of the Fed is in the monetary policy toolkits it's been able to build upon since. So we used to call the Fed the lender of last resort. And I think what we're now going to have to admit is with the adoption of the standing repo facility that's been put in place during the QT era or thereafter, where it is essentially now the lender of continuous resort, right?

1:42I mean, just yesterday on December 1st, it was tapped for close to$14 billion, like for liquidity purposes, like the day QT ended. The Fed just intervened. It used to be a big deal. And now the Fed just intervenes every day. So the role of monetary policy that is now being conducted in this regime, which is basically what when Fed governors talk about the ample reserve system is, this is the future of the Fed. We don't want to go back to a scarce reserve system. We're not going to be in an abundant reserve system. But we're in this now ample reserve system where we have now believed that$6 trillion is the right amount of balance sheet capital for the Fed to be maintaining and actually having unlimited capital on standby upon the request of the banks.

2:28And that means you're basically muting the possibility of there ever being a financial crisis. You're muting price discovery and liquidity discovery. And so, yeah, I think QT ending alongside having the standard repo facility in place is a totally new regime. And this should matter to most investors because historically, those who have looked at the Fed acting as a lender of last resort to step in when there's tremendous volatility in the market, the structure that we have now inherited is that we may not really see that kind of volatility again. Something will break differently. And it will have to break, I think, much more astronomically because of the capacity for what this means.

3:12And in that sense, it doesn't surprise me that the equity market will continue to go up. If you really think the whole play for a while was you needed the equity market to kind of participate in price action where you saw liquidity breaks, we're just going to see less of these liquidity events. Does Bitcoin go up because QT ended? I think Bitcoin will go up when there's another acronym that comes out of the Scrabble board that the Fed has to rediscover to create a new emergency and intervention program. And I think part of why QT ending is a good deal is because now everyone can go back to the drawing board and figure out what the next thing is going to break.

3:49There you go. QT is over. QE is back. And Jeff, he's bullish. All that tells me one thing. Asset prices over the next two to three years, they're going higher, baby. All right, ladies and gentlemen, there is turmoil at Apple. Everyone is wondering what is going on in Cupertino. It's like TMZ is trying to cover all the different moves. Now, Polymarket is reporting that within the last 72 hours, Apple's AI chief steps down. That's obviously a big deal. The AI chief, the person responsible for AI, they're gone. Apple's head of UI design, they just left to go to Meta. Apple's policy chief, they stepped down.

4:25And Apple's head of general counsel, they also stepped down. That is a ton of talent that is leaving the door. Now, this comes amid significant public pressure for the mega cap tech company because people are questioning one thing. Has this business fallen behind in the AI race? Does Tim Cook know what he's doing? Can AI actually be the death of Apple? Steve Jobs rolling over in his grave. It's not a good look when so many people are leaving. But this is on top of speculation that Tim Cook could be gone sometime in 2026. Polymarket odds on that. Cook is out by March 31st. The odds are 19%. It's not super, super high, but 19 % ain't 1%.

5:02So that's worth paying attention to. Now, all this may be noise. Apple stock is up 15 % year to date. Again, it's not up 50, but it also ain't negative. So Apple, yeah, there's lots of speculation. Lots of talent is leaving. People think Tim Cook's reign may be over and people are worried that Apple is behind in AI. At the end of the day, the stock's up 15%. This is a very large company that's still growing, that still has a massive fan base, both here domestically and internationally. What I always say, don't count them out, baby. There's a reason why Apple has stayed around for so long, through so many decades and through so much different leadership.

5:36Apple, just when everyone gets sour on it, may be the time to actually start paying attention and see. What if Apple doesn't lose? What if it actually can pull off exactly what everyone thinks is gone and in the past? Now, before I let you guys leave today, I've got a very special treat. We are going to talk to Jonathan Swanson. He's the CEO of Athena, and he's here to explain to us what is the impact of foreign remote workers on the U.S. economy? And he's going to explain what companies are using this talent for. And is it actually a net positive to help make companies much more productive? or should we be concerned about these foreign remote workers?

6:11Here's my conversation with Jonathan Swanson. All right, Jonathan, I thought a great place to start this conversation is obviously you guys are helping tons of companies go and get these kind of remote workers that come from international markets. And I think one of the debates right now going on in the economy and with economic policy and even in politics, it's just like there's pros and cons. It seems like there's a productivity argument. There's also our American jobs being shipped overseas. Help understand like how do you view the pros and cons here? and like, what are you actually seeing on the ground, right?

6:40Take away all the nonsense and just like, what is the actual kind of ground truth in this market? Yeah, so America's superpower is leverage, not cheap labor. Being pro-America for me means doubling down on the things we're really good at, which is capital, ideas, innovation, brand distribution. It does not mean doing low value, low dollar tasks. And so I believe that America wins by being the brain and the capital of the system, not by being the back office. So that means we leverage international labor for low-cost services so that we can take on the higher leverage, higher dollar jobs here in the United States.

7:19So when you think about that, I mean, it makes sense, right? Is if you can go and get something that is a job that maybe somebody in the United States either one doesn't want or two has the opportunity to actually make more money, do something more productive, do something that might even be more fulfilling for them, you can get that leverage and obviously the internet and remote work has really kind of opened that up. What are the types of jobs that people are outsourcing in this manner? And how do you see that changing a company, whether it's on their economics, the way that they run their teams, you know, maybe even the types of employees that they're hiring within the United States now that they are leveraging some of these people for back office type stuff?

7:53Yeah. So you can help, you can hire people in the Philippines, Kenya, Guatemala to help with all sorts of stuff. You can help with your calendar, your inbox, scheduling meetings, help with your sales team, give leverage to your executives, anything that can be done remotely over the internet. You can find someone talented in the developing world who's excited to do it for a low cost. And I think the impact this has on American jobs is that it allows us to increase more high quality jobs here. So if a founder or a small business owner can leverage someone in the Philippines to do low level work, That means they have more capital to hire an engineer or a designer or a PM or someone who drives innovation and higher value work.

8:38Yeah. One of the things that I find interesting about these things is I've looked online. I've gone on, you know, whether it's Reddit forums or various places and just I've tried to understand, like, what are people using this talent for? Right now, there's definitely some people who are doing kind of outlier type things. But for the most part, you know, you mentioned inbox or scheduling meetings or things like that. They seem like almost features of a much broader job rather than fully replacing a job. Can you talk about maybe some of the things that you're using some of this talent for? I know you've kind of like optimized and have this very interesting way of using this talent.

9:13Yeah. So my story here is I grew up Midwest, Midwestern boy. I didn't grow up with executive assistants or even house cleaners, any of that sort of thing. My first job out of school, I worked at the White House and I sat next to the president's executive assistants. And as you might imagine, these executive assistants were really freaking good. And it set my bar really high for, wow, what could I accomplish if I had a team of executive assistants like the president? So when I left the White House, I said, why don't I build that team for myself and see what I can accomplish? And so I started with one assistant in the Philippines and she started by doing the basic stuff, inbox, calendar, scheduling, travel.

9:53But over time, I saw that I could delegate more and more. And so at one point when I was scaling my first business, I told my assistant, you know, I don't have any friends outside of work. I just work all the time. Can you help me make some friends? And so she started planning me dinner parties every week at my house. 10 new people will come to my house who I hadn't met before and I'd walk in, I'd make 10 new friends. That's how I made all my best friends, including my wife. And then my assistant helped plan our wedding. And now my assistant helps with our kids. And so people typically start with low level, simple things like paying a bill or, you know, doing passport application, but then over time, it can become more intimate and higher leverage.

10:33Now, when you see kind of this talent doing this, I know some companies who give like every executive basically like a co-pilot, right? Or an executive assistant or something like that. And they're basically like, how does this person help you become more productive? What I find interesting is that's the same exact pitch that all these AI companies now are saying, right? It's like, hey, we'll give you software that can help go do this. Where do you see the software actually being valuable for people to become more productive? And then maybe still human labor being able to do things that either software can't do.

11:04Maybe there's things that software is just not really optimized to do. How do you kind of see that relationship playing out in the coming years? Yeah, I think it's the combination of human and machine that's the most powerful. And, you know, my view, if you don't have an assistant, you are the assistant. And so the first thing is to find someone that can be an assistant for you. If you only have 20 bucks a month, then hire ChatGPT as your assistant. And, you know, that can be a good start. you can ask ChatGPT, hey, here's my two or three personal and professional goals. How could I execute against these?

11:37But where a human can actually take it farther is can go execute in the real world. And obviously, that line is going to transition over time. And in our view, it's going to be like Tesla self-driving cars. Elon, when he built the first Tesla, he put a steering wheel in it because a human need to drive it. But over time, it had lane control and assisted braking, and the machine gradually is taking more and more control. And we think the same thing will happen in the executive assistant market, where it's mostly human driven today, but gradually over time, the machine will be able to do more and more.

12:09And that means the human graduates to higher level tasks, more strategic things, more project management, and the machine actually becomes the assistant to the human. Yeah, it's pretty interesting how the productivity doesn't just stop at the executive or, you know, maybe the kind of American worker doing the highest value work. Instead, you're basically making the argument that this software should make everyone more productive, even the assistant or people doing kind of the back office stuff. How do we think about cost for this? Is there some way to, you know, hey, if you pay$100 in the United States, there's some cost you should expect to pay for this labor?

12:42Or is it somewhat case by case, depending on the task? Yeah. So for an assistant in the United States, you might pay$100 ,000,$150 ,000 in San Francisco, New York City. For an assistant through my company, Athena, you pay$3 ,000 a month. So significantly less. And I tell everyone, you don't have to use my company, but if you want to go do it yourself, you can go hire someone, an Upwork or otherwise for four or five bucks an hour. And in some countries, this is amazing compensation. A nurse in some of these countries is getting paid$2 an hour. And so you can pay them more than they'll get anywhere else.

13:19It's a wonderful paying job for them. And then for you, you get more leverage in your life. And so I think some people have maybe a little guilt about asking someone to help them. And it doesn't make sense for someone just to do all these things for me. And what I say is you should flip that around and say, if you aren't delegating, if you aren't getting leverage, you're actually withholding a a good paying job from someone who would be excited to help you. Now, I guess part of the impact of this is these companies should become more productive, right? It seems also like the internet. This is kind of the purpose of the internet is you open up access.

13:55It's access for people to get information. It's access for them to get capital markets. It's access for them to connect with each other. What are some of the other things that maybe people aren't yet doing with this talent, but you think will become possible? Whether it's because software becomes prevalent, because, you know, more people that are in these markets start to come online and look for these types of jobs. You know, is it a world where one day, you know, a doctor in one of these markets is all of a sudden just kind of doing like telehealth? And, you know, people are realizing that, okay, maybe I don't trust the doctor to do all of the work, but maybe they can like look at the x-ray or, you know, something like that.

14:31Yeah, the productivity gains are profound. So there's actually a famous economics paper called Trillion Dollar Bills on the Sidewalk. And it looked at what if you removed all the barriers to trade in goods? And what if you moved all the barriers to trade in services? And in goods, you'd increase the economy by 10%. But in services, you'd actually increase the economy by 100%. So it's tens of trillions of dollars of labor, of productivity gains to be gained by exchanging services across borders. And yeah, I think, you know, it started with lower level tasks like customer support or back office IT or executive assistants is going up the chain.

15:14I think over time, it's going to become doctors and lawyers and everything else. And you'll have your digital assistant who can be your front line as your doctor, lawyer, etc. But then you'll have a human in the loop who can jump on a video call to kind of elevate the conversation if you want to move beyond the machine. What are the big challenges to the business? So we recruiting executive assistants is a huge part of our job. We recruit 50 ,000 executive assistants apply to work at our company every month across a bunch of different countries. We put them through a huge battery of tests and interviews.

15:56We actually build in-person four-story training centers in countries around the world where they come in for interviews. And then we train them further. We run something called Athena Academy that is effectively a college where they come and get trained. And then if they stay with us for five years, they can get their own MBA degree. So there's a huge amount of vetting work to be done. And this is why I tell people, if you go to hire an assistant on your own, the important thing to do is you need to vet a lot of people because you might need to vet three or 400 to find that one gym who really moves the needle.

16:30And finding that one gym is really the hard part of the business. And the second thing is it's really it's a partnership. And so if you expect someone to come into your life and just automate your whole life and make everything better, that's not how it works. You have to give the more you give to the relationship, the more feedback. the more coaching, the more you're a partner in it, the more powerful the leverage you can get. It almost feels like there's a degree of like the quality of the instructions leads to the quality of the output to a degree. Absolutely. Like if you look at who the best assistants are at our company, they just happen to work for the clients who are the best at delegating, right?

17:10And those clients who, and often engineers have this mindset of you need to be able to take the algorithm them from your head of your preferences and what you want and export that as a checklist of here's the 10 steps you can do to make this thing happen for me. And people who are really good at delegating like that get the best leverage. That makes sense to me. Where can people find more about Athena and kind of understand how this works? Yeah, go to athena.com slash pomp. We've got a special offer for your listeners if they're interested. And yeah, look, I say, If you don't have an assistant, you are the assistant.

17:49Don't have to use, start with ChatGPT if that's all you got and start learning how to delegate. And then as you have more capital, you can use that to move up to higher leverage forms of assistant over time. And our view is this is the best trade in the world. Gold and Bitcoin are valuable, but nothing's more valuable than time. That is true. Time is the ultimate currency. So if you can find ways to get back time, I completely agree. The, if you don't have an assistant, you are the assistant is a great line. I can tell you've done this before. Yeah, no one wants to be the assistant. And, you know, sometimes people ask me like, can you delegate too much?

18:31Or are you giving up life if you delegate everything? And I'm like, no one wants to wait at the DMV to renew a driver's license or fill out forms. People want to spend time with their family, with their kids, want to start businesses, want to do higher leverage things. And so the more you can offload the lower level tasks, the more you can chase your dreams and do bigger things. I love it. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Jonathan. We will definitely do this again in the future. Awesome. Thank you. Now, my takeaway from that conversation is pretty interesting. If you look at it from one lens, you would say that foreign remote workers, they actually are taking jobs from American workers.

19:08But I think Jonathan brings up a very, very important point. What if actually they're taking away the tasks, not the jobs, but just the tasks that Americans don't want to do, and it's freeing up an American talent to actually get paid more money, do more productive jobs, to make companies more profitable? That is ultimately the debate. It's great to hear from somebody who is trying to build a company and a product that helps people get low-cost foreign work because in his mind, it makes companies more productive. I'd love to hear from you though. Let me know in the comments, what exactly do you think is going on with that type of a business?

19:39That's it for today. Thank you guys so much for watching. Please continue to subscribe on YouTube, and I'll see you guys on Monday, live from the desk of Anthony Pompliano.