The Julia La Roche Show

In part one of The Wrap's viewer question special, Chris Whalen takes on a full slate of audience questions about the Fed, the Treasury, and where rates go from here. He explains why Kevin Warsh and Scott Bessent have largely written off war-driven inflation as something monetary policy can't fix, and what it would actually take to change that posture. From there he walks through the plumbing most commentary skips: why shrinking bank reserves would push short-term yields down rather than up, how the Treasury can run its own version of quantitative easing through repurchase agreements, and why the Fed's mortgage-backed securities book — much of it now carrying an average life measured in decades — represents what he calls a study in hubris. He also fields the practical questions: whether long Treasuries are worth owning (his answer is no), where he'd park cash instead, what a 5% 10-year does to the deficit math, and how big the next crisis-era bailout would have to be. The episode closes on the yen carry trade, the limits of what Washington can do about it, and Whalen's expectation that nothing difficult gets attempted before the midterms.

Thank you to our sponsor, Monetary Metals. Learn more at https://www.monetary-metals.com/THEWRAP/

Links:    
The Institutional Risk Analyst: https://www.theinstitutionalriskanalyst.com/ 
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/rcwhalen    
Seeing Around Corners book: https://www.theinstitutionalriskanalyst.com/product-page/seeing-around-corners-achieving-success-in-business-and-life-hardcover

Use the code TheWrap2026 for 25% off your first year of The Institutional Risk Analyst https://www.theinstitutionalriskanalyst.com/plans-pricing

Timestamps:
0:00 — Cold open: shrinking reserves and the Treasury's repo plan
0:33 — Welcome + what this episode is (part one of viewer Q&A)
1:10 — How long will the Fed stay indifferent to inflation?
4:08 — Could we cut the Fed out of rate decisions and just use SOFR?
5:02 — Would you buy a 30-year bond at these rates?
6:35 — If the Fed shrinks its balance sheet, don't rates go up?
9:43 — What does "Treasury doing QE on the short end" actually mean?
12:30 — A word from Monetary Metals
13:56 — Can the Treasury handle 5% on the 10-year?
15:26 — T-bills — pros, cons, and better alternatives
16:25 — How big does the next bailout have to be?
18:48 — The yen, intervention, and the carry-trade squeeze
21:16 — The biggest macro story of the back half of the year
23:37 — Parting thoughts: Florida, earnings season, and UWM next week

Economic forecaster and bestselling author Harry Dent makes his debut on the show with one of the most aggressive bearish calls we've hosted. Dent — who built his reputation forecasting the 1980s–2000s boom and Dow 10,000 when almost nobody believed it — walks through the three long-term cycles he uses to map the economy decades ahead: the 39-year generational spending wave, the 45- and 90-year technology innovation cycles, and a geopolitical cycle. His conclusion is that the downturn that should have arrived in 2008 was smothered by roughly $31 trillion in stimulus, creating a bubble that now spans stocks, real estate, and even gold. He lays out what a full reversion looks like — a first-wave crash he thinks could be visible by October, housing down 60% in the middle of the country and more at the high end, and a path back toward the 2009 lows for equities — and explains why he believes long-dated Treasuries, not gold, are the only real safe haven. Dent also makes the case that the bust is not the enemy: it's where innovation and affordability come from, and where the millennial generation finally gets its shot. Looking past the washout, he sees India and Southeast Asia as the growth engines of the next four decades, China as structurally finished, and US tech as the thing to buy when it's on sale.

Thank you to our partners
Augusta Precious Metals — To learn more, visit https://juliabuysgold.com/ or text “Julia" to 35052
Monetary Metals - learn more at https://www.monetary-metals.com/julia/
Links:
https://hsdent.com/hs-dent-forecast/

00:00 – Intro: Harry Dent makes his debut
00:59 – How demographics became his life's work
03:23 – The 45- and 90-year cycles that create bubbles
04:15 – Calling the 2007 top back in the 1980s
08:07 – AI is in its infancy — and that's when the biggest crashes happen
09:00 – India is the next China
10:28 – 2008 was 1930 all over again — and $31 trillion papered over it
13:08 – Anatomy of the everything bubble
14:30 – The average Ohio house down 60%. High-end down 70–80%
16:47 – The millennials who got priced out are the ones who win
19:12 – How far stocks fall: 90% on the S&P, 96% on the Nasdaq
22:20 – The first wave: 42% in 2.6 months
24:38 – "I was the most bullish forecaster on earth"
25:40 – Positioning for the first crash: SQQQ and sizing
27:06 – Why TLT and the 30-year Treasury are the trade after that
31:08 – The case against gold: it joined the everything bubble
34:21 – Which house should you sell? Not the one you think
39:15 – China's 22% empty real estate and the coming reckoning
45:00 – Nobody in a bubble sees the bubble because they're high on it
48:55 – Watch October

In this episode of The Wrap with Chris Whalen, Chris breaks down the 777 Partners bankruptcy — a sprawling collapse touching insurance, reinsurance, soccer clubs, and airlines that he says is a preview of how private credit ultimately unwinds: slowly, messily, and with fraud along the way. He explains why the contagion risk to insurance matters most for ordinary people, since firms like Apollo, Brookfield, and Blue Owl use insurance balance sheets to fund private credit strategies, leaving annuity and life policyholders exposed. Chris also digs into United Wholesale Mortgage, arguing the real problem wasn't the Two Harbors hedge but years of cash extraction and overvalued servicing assets — and what Oaktree's $1.5 billion rescue means now that "the grim reaper of Wall Street" is in the building. On markets, he describes a manic tape where cycles no longer exist, questions whether AI valuations survive Chinese competitors offering the same functionality at a tenth of the cost, and wonders whether Kevin Warsh will finally let the market take a hit. He then makes the case that the cooler CPI print is masking a genuine inflation problem: diesel is up roughly 35% since February, key industrial chemicals and LNG capacity was destroyed in the Iran conflict, and those input costs are rippling into food, housing, construction, and packaging. Finally, Chris explains why he thinks the gold and silver bull markets remain fully intact, and what the Byzantine Empire taught him about what happens when gold runs short.

Thank you to our sponsor, Monetary Metals. Learn more at https://www.monetary-metals.com/THEWRAP/

Links:    
The Institutional Risk Analyst: https://www.theinstitutionalriskanalyst.com/ 
777 Partners blog post: https://www.theinstitutionalriskanalyst.com/post/theira879
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/rcwhalen    
Seeing Around Corners book: https://www.theinstitutionalriskanalyst.com/product-page/seeing-around-corners-achieving-success-in-business-and-life-hardcover

Use the code TheWrap2026 for 25% off your first year of The Institutional Risk Analyst https://www.theinstitutionalriskanalyst.com/plans-pricing

Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro
1:37 - 777 Partners bankruptcy: what the demise of private credit looks like
3:56 - Does this accelerate the slow-motion train wreck?
5:45 - Contagion risk to insurance: annuities, life policies, and private credit balance sheets
7:36 - United Wholesale Mortgage, Mat Ishbia, and the Oaktree rescue
10:44 - Oaktree, the "grim reaper of Wall Street," and stress in mortgage lending
11:00 - DSCR loans and the rental-property workaround
12:13 - Monetary Metals: earn a yield on your gold
13:22 - Markets at records: "the numbers are too big"
15:20 - The Warsh Fed: will bailouts end?
16:05 - AI valuations, the price war, and Chinese competition
17:36 - Inflation beneath the surface: input costs are exploding
18:08 - Diesel up 35%, heating oil, chemicals, and the fall squeeze
20:02 - Food prices, farmers, and the Iran war fallout
22:39 - Spillover into housing, construction materials, and packaging
24:19 - Gold's run higher and Chinese buying
25:13 - Silver: a commercial trade, and the supply problem
26:44 - The WGA precious metals top 25 list
28:14 - Lessons from Byzantine monetary history
29:38 - Parting thoughts: private credit surprises, the Middle East, and the midterms
30:39 - Closing

Jim Rickards returns for a wide-ranging macro conversation on a world where geopolitics and economics have fully merged. He lays out the US–Iran standoff as a global game of chicken — Trump betting Iran's economy breaks first, Iran betting the midterm elections break Trump first — and explains why he thinks Tehran holds the stronger hand, why regime change was always a fantasy, and how a handful of drones a week is enough to keep the Strait of Hormuz bottled up. From there he turns to gold: how he used Jim Rogers' 50% drawdown rule and fractal scale invariance to call the bottom, why central bank buying puts a floor under the market, why gold works as a deflation hedge as well as an inflation hedge, and why he stands by his $10,000 target. He also dismantles the popular "debasement trade" narrative, explains what Kevin Warsh's less transparent, market-following Fed means for investors conditioned to expect a rescue, and walks through the unwinding of the Japanese yen carry trade — which he calls the most important story in the world right now, and the one most likely to make 2027 messy. The episode closes on the darker side of AI: increasingly sophisticated voice-cloned scams aimed at older Americans.

Thank you to our partners
Augusta Precious Metals — To learn more, visit https://juliabuysgold.com/ or text “Julia" to 35052
Monetary Metals - learn more at https://www.monetary-metals.com/julia/

More about Rickards:
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, The New Case for Gold, Sold Out: How Broken Supply Chains, Surging Inflation, and Political Instability Will Sink the Global Economy, and his newest book MoneyGPT: AI and the Threat to 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.

Links:  
http://www.jamesrickardsproject.com/
https://x.com/RealJimRickards
Visit CallFort.io  or download the app https://apps.apple.com/us/app/callfort/id6752949954

Timestamps:
0:00 – Intro: welcome back, Jim Rickards
1:04 – Geopolitics and economics have merged: chokepoints and economic warfare
3:30 – The US–Iran game of chicken: what each side is betting
6:13 – Regime change isn't happening — and why killing leaders backfired
10:42 – Lost credibility and the Iran–Oman deal the US wasn't part of
14:41 – The midterm clock, and how Iran keeps the Strait closed
17:23 – [Sponsor: Augusta Precious Metals]
19:04 – Gold's drawdown: the Jim Rogers 50% rule and fractal math
24:04 – Why gold goes much higher — and the $10,000 call
25:03 – What's driving gold: central banks, deflation, flat mine supply
31:15 – Why the "debasement trade" narrative is wrong
33:00 – Inside the primary dealer world and the old Fed
35:00 – Kevin Warsh, killing the dot plot, and a whole new Fed
38:16 – [Sponsor: Monetary Metals]
40:03 – The Fed's only real job — and what Friedman got wrong
44:13 – The yen carry trade: the most important story in the world
48:55 – The petrodollar, Japan's Treasuries, and the Bessent bailout
51:43 – Why currency defenses always fail, and why 2027 gets messy
52:50 – AI, sophisticated scams, and the Callfort app
59:10 – What's next: climbing Kilimanjaro

Michael Howell, CEO of CrossBorder Capital, an investment advisory firm, and author of Capital Wars, returns to explain why the global liquidity cycle peaked in late Q3/early Q4 of last year — and what that means for the rest of 2026. His core argument: money is fungible but finite, and a booming real economy is now pulling liquidity out of financial assets, which compresses P/E multiples even as earnings look fine. That puts us in what he calls the speculation phase: rising bond yields, strong commodities, pressured crypto, and low-quality equity returns where index gains mask widespread underperformance. He also pushes back hard on the popular "debasement trade" explanation for gold, arguing the real driver is the People's Bank of China injecting liquidity to devalue the yuan internally while holding it steady externally — with Chinese retail locked out of crypto and the Shanghai Gold Exchange now setting the marginal price. On the bond side, he lays out how the Treasury is quietly monetizing through front-end issuance and buybacks — private-sector QE under Treasury direction — a strategy that works until it doesn't, with Japan's move from 50bps to nearly 3% as the cautionary tale. His bottom line: range-bound Wall Street, no bonds, gold and silver on weakness, and watch commodities for the first sign the boom is ending.

Thank you to our partners
Augusta Precious Metals — To learn more, visit https://juliabuysgold.com/ or text “Julia" to 35052
Monetary Metals - learn more at https://www.monetary-metals.com/julia/

Links: 
Website: http://www.crossbordercapital.com/
Twitter/X https://x.com/crossbordercap
Substack: https://capitalwars.substack.com/
Book: https://www.amazon.com/Capital-Wars-Rise-Global-Liquidity/dp/3030392902

0:00 The call: range-bound market, own gold
0:20 Welcome back, Michael Howell
1:19 Two pools of money: markets vs. the real economy
2:30 The liquidity cycle has peaked
3:20 What this phase looks like
4:48 Why a booming economy is bad for stocks
5:22 The P/E multiple is where liquidity shows up
6:34 Late cycle, explained
7:38 Augusta Precious Metals
9:29 Global liquidity vs. the world business cycle
10:45 Atlanta Fed nowcast near 6%
11:54 The K-shaped economy is global
12:45 Monetary inflation vs. Main Street inflation
14:45 Speculation now, turbulence next
15:15 The cycle map
17:55 Monetary Metals
19:49 Gold: it isn't the debasement trade
20:30 It's China: PBOC liquidity
22:15 Why gold and not crypto
23:14 Inside the PBOC balance sheet
25:00 Yuan gold and the 27,000 line
26:15 Bond yields track nominal GDP
27:40 NGDP at 7-8% vs. a 4.7% ten-year
28:18 Treasury QE: funding at the front end
30:20 Who's actually buying the debt?
30:51 The beach ball under water
32:35 The two-year note leads the Fed
34:30 The 2022 analogue
36:00 Why MOVE matters more than VIX
37:08 Treasury buybacks and the volatility cap
38:30 Margin debt and the 2026 range call
39:31 Parting thoughts: commodities as the warning
40:30 Gold, silver, and the ratio to watch