America’s Economic Divide, Global Energy Crisis, AI Job Losses, Bitcoin’s Future

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1:28Anthony Scaramucci:We have a recession if you're poor. We don't have a recession if you're part of the big infrastructure build, if you're part of the tech world. There's parts of the economy doing great. I said the Biden economy and the Trump economy had the same problem. It's a K-shaped recovery. It's good for the people that are in the knowledge business, in the tech business, in the infrastructure, now power business, and it's harder and harder for everyday citizens.

1:51Michael Novogratz:Welcome to All Things Markets. I am Anthony Scaramucci. And I am Mike Novogratz. Michael Novogratz, nothing going on in the world, as you and I both know. Well, not really. OK, the world is unwinding as we're speaking. So let's go right away to oil. Everybody listening in knows that the United States has been in a air war, effectively, over the last 11 or 12 days. We did go from a Hemeni to a Hemeni in one Scaramucci, Mike Novogratz. So that's what you call regime change in less than a Scaramucci. But crude went to 120. It's now backed off to 90. 84. 84. Okay, 84 now. Okay, looking at it, you're right.

2:36Michael Novogratz:Dow is down 900 points on a Monday. Finished up. Prices look good today. Up again. Where are we, Mike?

2:46Anthony Scaramucci:You know, listen, this is all geopolitical. It's all trying to figure out when does Trump talk up, right? Listen, we went in, I think, for righteous reasons, right? Like you had a shit regime that was murdering their own people. And this is my interpretation. I think Donald Trump said I'd already drawn a red line if they were going to murder their own people. And they did. And I'm going to do something about it. I'm going to be a hero. We had the Israelis who have always been wanting to take out, you know, the Iran hierarchy. And so those two things lined up. We re-stoked up the fear of nukes that we had absolutely obliterated six months earlier.

3:32And we've changed our reason to be in Iran about four or five times. The current reasoning is we want to debilitate the regime from being able to show power in the world, show nuclear power, show show any kind of power, terrorism power, financial power.

3:53Anthony Scaramucci:And so it's kind of just to devastate the regime and maybe hoping regime change comes from that. But it's no longer regime change, even though Trump did at one point say it was. And so the market is saying, well, if that's the high bar, we're pretty damn close to it. And all Trump has to do is declare victory and say we've debilitated the regime and walk away and the straits open back up.

4:20Michael Novogratz:Yeah, well, that's what I want to talk about, though. So how do you get the straight opened up? It seems to be generally closed. Very few tankers are going through there. They've attacked one of our tankers. How do you get the straight to open up? talk about the strength of the U.S. dollar. You and I talk about all the time dollar debasement, but in a world like this, dollar's the tallest of the shortest people in the room, right? See that? You see how clever I was? I didn't use the word midget, right? Because we're in a woke society. See that?

4:52Anthony Scaramucci:What's interesting is day one of a crisis, markets start adjusting. And day two, it's always a correlated risk unwind, which means people sell the shit they're in. They stop at what they're short, they sell what they're long. And so things like URIBOR, you know, German short-term interest rate futures sold off 60 basis points, pricing in a full 50 basis point hike when we had thought they were gonna be cutting rates. That's because lots of the big European macro fronts had huge positions in it. People were short oil. You can panic that, oh my God, if the straights are closed for 10 days, they've got to cut off production in places like Saudi because they have nowhere to store it and it takes a long time to get production back on and you know that's a 20 of the world's oil flows through the strait and prices are set on the margin which means you'll pay anything for the last barrel and so prices skyrocket up then they collapse because everyone who needed to stop out or get along not long and i think oil now is going to trade between 70 75 on the low side and 100 105 on the high side and it's going to jump back and forth with rumors before it collapses again back to 60 and so it's not nearly as scary anymore being short oil into into extensions because you already had the blow-off top just like we had a blow-off top in silver We're not getting back to that silver price.

6:24Anthony Scaramucci:Like those things happen once when everyone gets squeezed.

6:27Michael Novogratz:I want to role play with you because I like role playing in life. And you're Kevin Warsh. And I am your econometric analyst. And you've already gotten approved. Tom Tellis has waved you through, Kevin Warsh. You're now the chairman of the Federal Reserve. And I'm sitting here with you. I'm saying, hmm, inflation is ticking up. slower growth than expected 92 000 jobs lost uh but gas prices i'm cutting rates anthony this is

6:57Anthony Scaramucci:stag like it's not really stagflation the oil impetus is a one-off it will come and go right up down you know so you're not you're gonna i mean how much are you cutting rates kev how much you cutting rates i'm starting with a 25 and i'm gonna watch i'm gonna get 75 done by the end of the year are you gonna single that to the market it depends if the market allows me to which i mean by that is i'm going to look at whatever that ppi cpi trend is and you know what the like the last jobs number was just horrific horrific horrific and so one more bad jobs number i'm maybe even cutting 50 like worse thinks rates should be a lot lower right he's made that clear to people he's spoken to before he got uh that's not because trump like give him credit it's convenient because Trump wants them lower, but it's not because of Trump.

7:46Anthony Scaramucci:And I think he will signal that quickly, especially if we get another wheat chop.

7:51Michael Novogratz:Mr. Chairman, are we going to avoid a recession? Are you able to move fast enough?

7:55Anthony Scaramucci:We got to be careful with words like recession because we have a recession if you're poor. Right. We just do. We don't have a recession if you're part of the big infrastructure build, if you're part of the tech world. um you know and so these companies are making so much money i was out with a spectacularly bright tech investor yesterday he was like damn an anthropologist gonna get to 100 billion of revenue 100 billion it's a company that didn't exist three years ago uh i mean that's the most breathtaking prediction i'd heard a long time this guy was telling me he thought uh 2027 and Nvidia is trading at 10 times earnings.

8:40Anthony Scaramucci:Like that's how much profit's being built into these things. So there's parts of the economy doing great. This is like I said, the Biden economy and the Trump economy had the same problem. It's a K-shaped recovery. It's good for the people that are in the knowledge business, you know, in the tech business, in the infrastructure, now power business. And it's harder and harder for everyday citizens.

9:00Michael Novogratz:Now you're Mike Novogratz again, okay? You've been pretty vocal because I watch your interviews, okay? away from this network, you've been pretty vocal about fiscal recklessness. You talk about your time working in Washington and how to benchmark things. I feel like Jerome Powell has done an okay job. You disagree with that or you? I think Powell gets a star. Okay. All right. And so where do you think the dollar will be then if we're going to be jamming rates down 75 basis points by year end.

9:32Anthony Scaramucci:I think euro makes it back to 130 or 116 now as a barometer. I think dollar Brazil and dollar Mexico head lower, right? Everyone had to get out of those trades because shit, when the world blows up, you want to just put everything in the dollar for a second. But I think the moment the world's unblown up, people start selling dollars again. There's a movement away from the US. I mean, listen, you might like what Donald Trump has done in Venezuela, we should talk about that in a sec, and in Iran from a geopolitical perspective. But the way we've done it is not endearing ourselves to a lot of people around the world.

10:12Michael Novogratz:No question.

10:13Anthony Scaramucci:And there's already been a, this is a different America. It's a bully. It's a, you know, power wins. It's not the America that came up with the Marshall Plan. It's not the America that you know crafted you know the the economic and political infrastructure that ruled the world for the last 35 years and so i just think that's sell the dollar as people rebalance oh i mean listen i

10:40Michael Novogratz:mean remember you know those guys were not idealists michael they were strategists they knew that by setting the world up like that and creating a rules-based order was actually going to help america because it would allow america despite its power and military strength have natural alliances we're now busting that and we're creating all these unnatural things but go to venezuela for a second because uh you met recently it's exactly who you know famously gave her nobel

11:10Anthony Scaramucci:prize to um president trump and i have to say you know she stayed at my house for two hours she was unbelievably engaging she answered i ask a lot of weird questions and hard questions you know i start giving you a weird question how were you born rich middle class or poor uh she was born rich okay um nice you still married no she's divorced uh where do your kids live outside of the country uh nice frank and but the story of her last two years in hiding and then getting on a boat breaking her back to try to get to the nobel ceremony missing it by a

11:52Anthony Scaramucci:Oh, 80 days ago. You know, 80 days ago, she's literally eight hours at sea, breaks her back, getting to some rescue boat to leave Venezuela. She gave Donald Trump that Nobel Prize, not because he wanted it, I mean, partly, but because she said, for years, we've been under this dictatorship in Venezuela, this kleptocteracy, right, this criminal organization. And everyone gave lip service to helping us and no one helped us. And the way she saw it is the first person that helped them. And so I think about that in this context. She had like, what would be the equivalent if you add of the diaspora, 80 % approval.

12:36Anthony Scaramucci:She is a legend in Venezuela. We've decided right or wrong, we're going to keep the old vice president who is very disliked both domestically and certainly by the diaspora in charge just to keep stability for a while. In my argument to the Trump administration is Iran's going to be hard. You guys want to win right now. People think if you're a skeptic, oh, they took Venezuela for the oil and Trump took the money and sent it to Qatar. And it's just more corruption. I'm telling you, if they'd announce elections six months from now, nine months from now, 12 months from now, free and fair elections that we will monitor.

13:22Anthony Scaramucci:Trump will turn Venezuela into this glorious victory because people will say, damn, we did it for the right reason. America will be proud of what we did. Venezuelans will love us. I literally think the Trump administration has this amazing opportunity to declare elections for nine months forward. And then the story goes, my God, we did go in and do something really wonderful for this part of the world. So much money will flow into the capital into Venezuela. I got some money already invested there. I'll put a lot more in if I think there's rule of law. And so that transition will take the cynics and optimists.

13:59Anthony Scaramucci:And he's going to need that because Iran is not going to be easy to fix, right? We got a guy that's half alive that is, you know, just murdered his father and his wife and half his family. So I don't think he's going to be a guy in for regime change. We don't know, you know, when Israel goes in and bombs their, uh, bombs, their, uh, oil, oil tanks that creates smoke galore. And then black rain and all of fricking Tehran is covered in greasy oil. Uh, it does not endear yourself to the people. Like we had started saying, we're going to take out the bad guys and leave infrastructure alone. And somehow we lost our patience.

14:35Uh, and so I think they're going to

14:39Anthony Scaramucci:need some PR help. And I think Venezuela is a great way to get it. And listen, like I said, I actually kind of thought regime change is a great goal, even though it's hard to pull off in Iran. And we'll see. We'll see. The jury's out. I do think they're going to end this war in the next 10 days because they have to. The allies, and we were talking to some senior people in Abu Dhabi, they've had it. They've like, dude, you got five days left. And there's been promises made back and forth. At least I'm told.

15:20Michael Novogratz:Okay, but Michael, so in five days, if it doesn't end, then what do the people in the Emirates or other allies in the region do? What would their recourse be?

15:30Anthony Scaramucci:The amount of trust they have for this administration, which was starting at 100, right? Right. They were big backers of Donald Trump. Abu Dhabi was, Qatar was, Saudi was. You know, they have leverage because they've invested, they promised to invest all this money. They're in all these deals. And so I don't think you want to piss off your banker. That's like rule 101.

15:55Michael Novogratz:Let me say this, the other day I need to ask you this question for the whole week. And I want to frame it in the following way. The markets have a codependent relationship with Donald Trump. They're like a boyfriend and girlfriend. They're like John Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette arguing in the park, right? And you know exactly what I'm talking about. They watch each other. The market watches Trump. Trump watches the market. And so are you really saying the geopolitical outcome of this war is going to be related to Trump market washing and pressure from market participants?

16:30Anthony Scaramucci:I think the geopolitical, yes, I do. I think the geopolitical outcome of this war is going to be how much pain Trump can take before he declares victory. He can declare victory tomorrow. And so it's a short fuse. Right. And the strait reopens. Listen, we've done the insurance thing. That's coming in a week. We've got France's Navy and our Navy say, well, let's squirt things. And so, like, that's all meant to calm things down and get the oil price low. But the only way it really flows is you end hostilities. Okay.

17:04Michael Novogratz:So, Michael, just so I'm clear, you and I are going to do a show next week. I think the war will be over. And the war will be over. Okay. So where is the - Broadly over. OK, so where is the dollar when Trump declares that the regime has unconditionally surrendered to him, which is his very vague now elastic definition of unconditioning? He's not FDR channeling the Japanese surrender. So they unconditionally surrendered to him. In the meantime, the regime is still intact. Where is the dollar? Where's oil?

17:37Anthony Scaramucci:Oil's back at 70, 75, 70, 75 on its way to 60. And the dollar is much weaker. You know, euro is probably 119, headed to 130. Stocks are higher. Rates, ironically, are higher. Like rates have had the weirdest reaction because everyone's saying, oh, this is inflationary. And therefore, let's price in less rate cuts or even rate hikes. I just think it's crazy. The oil impulse is never inflationary. It's short-term spike. It's deflationary. It slows the economy down. And so I don't know. I think between the, this will slow us down some. There's already, right? And so you're going to slow the economy down some.

18:26Anthony Scaramucci:You've got AI. I mean, what do you think about AI? It's a deflation machine.

18:31Michael Novogratz:I had somebody say to me today that they're selling their house here on Long Island. And I said, why are you selling your house on Long Island? You love Long Island. He says, oh no, there's going to be such massive job losses in the next five years that my house is going to implode in value. Are they exaggerating that? Is that too apocalyptic for you? Or is that something that you think should be a legitimate concern? I don't think people should be worried about their Long Island house.

19:00Anthony Scaramucci:I don't.

19:01Michael Novogratz:Well, you know, the apocalyptic people are out there saying AI is taking every middle class, upper middle class, white collar job.