Why Markets Ignore The Iran War

Welcome back. I'm Peter Stayonos. This is a weekly roundup of my daily videos on the economy and Freedom, where I cut through the BS and lay out with the gaslighting clouds pulled out of their hats this week and what is coming next A new survey finds eighty one percent of Jen Z It says the economy is either bad or quote terrible. This matches the worst results of the two thousand eight crisis And the nineteen seventies staglation And it's weird considering jobs are doing just fine at four point three percent unemployment, historically low While the Atlanta Feds says GDP is running currently at four percent growth, which is historically high So why are young people so miserable? Three things, wages not keeping up with inflation Soaring college debt and housing that cost so much they got a crash with mom or share ramen with the roommates. with a new fear unlocked from AI and jobs The surveys from Generation Lab which found eighty one percent of Americans agge eighteen to thirty four rate the economy as bad or terrible with just two percent saying it's quote, excellent The numbers are identical by gender and race, except blacks where more say it's bad, but much more say it's excellent two and a half times more than whites Now As you'd expect, there's a huge difference by political party with Republicans optimistic and Democrats peering over the ledge Still, setting aside politics, the pain is real Unlike the sociology jobs they were expecting wages Hit a wall under Joe Biden with zero growth while prices jumped twenty five to thirty percent Trump's second term is back to grow thanks to tax cuts, deregulation and deportations that is a big hole to jump out of and it's not close to keeping up with housing which got a one, two punch of Biden inflation plus Powell's rate hikes, which together doubled the median mortgage to nearly two thousand two hundred dollars per month. It also drives up the salary you need to qualify for a mortgage which just hit one hundred twelve thousand according to Red Fin That's a problem for Gen Z since their median income is forty five thousand So even with two incomes, just one in five G Z can afford a house at the prime age to start a family In fact, one in three Gen Z are living with their parents, which is great depression levels The average first time home buuyer just passast forty years old, which is a bit long in the tooth to be starting a family The fertility rate, children per woman just hit the lowest in American history at one point seven. And then there's college, The average Gen Z grad is carrying over forty thousand double if they got that master's Now that was not a problem when even crap degrees paid, but the college wage premium was crashing down by half since nineteen sixty The majority of recent grads are working in jobs that don't require a degree, which makes for very expensive wall art. That's set to accelerate as AI gobbles up the entry level cubicle jobs would choose to be the safety net for gender studies and history degrees. placed with blue collar jobs, many ironically building the data centers and energy infrastructure that's said to wipe out. the college jobs So a sex Costs will get worse federal spending in the Federal Reserve are not going anywhere and AI will continue coming for the cushy cubicle jobs If Gen Z reskills for the jobs that actually exist rather than the jobs they wish existed, they will do great So skilled trades, engineering, medicine, AI adjacent skills AS that involves unlearning their entire government provided education, both the useless skills and the learned helplessness In short, the boomers got it for free. GenX got it close to free. Gen Z is gonna have to work for it European voters are finally waking up to mass migration so late the hot tell churs on the another night poll showing soaring voter support for mass deportation, a sad day for Europe censorship industrial complex bolted the suggestion box to police bandans but still cannot throw voters in prison fast enough to keep the rest in the dark Last week, French pollster I FP released a survey finding seventy percent of French voters with an opinion The French people are being quote, replaced by migrants with ninety percent saying that is a bad thing This echoes other recent polls with seventy percent of British, eighty percent of Spanish, eighty one percent of German saying immigration is too high In fact, a recent poll of German gays found the most popular party is the right wing mass deportation AFD Now youd think at seventy percent or eighty percent governments would be jumping to ship them back to Syria, but of course European countries are going the other direction. Spain's left wing government recently drove through mass amnesty for up to a million and a half illegals as about twelve million in U.S. population terms Enough that the right populace in next door France are threatening to build a border wall Italy allegedly run by a right wing populace just handed out half a million work visas under pressure from big Italian businesses who loves what migrants do to wages But some Europeans are waking up, starting with of all places Scandinavia Sweden just tightened citizenship requirements to exclude anybody who ever took welfare or committed a crime while requiring fluency in the Swedish language, which is currently at threat of extinction due to mass migration. Denmark is deporting any criminal charging migrants for the cost of deportation. a brand idea Finland is cracking down on asylum overdue considering so called refugees who vacation in their home country. they claim is too dangerous to be deported to So the background here is for decades left wing judges in Europe have interpreted the longstanding European Convention on Human Rights to ban any deportations to dangerous countries. Japan having to take anybody from Detroit or Baltimore. It also bans deportations where the person has family in Europe. so if only one of them rape, all of them get to stay They can't be deported if they have a serious medical condition. so every sick third worlder is Europe's problem If they've been in Europe for a long time, the judges call it undue burden or if their home country doesn't take them. Many don't since migrant remittances make up a huge chunk of the economy in Africa. Put it together and it's hard to deport anybody Now a group of nine, mostly Eastern European countries are trying to fix this, which should be easy considering voters favor it by seventycent to eighty percent. Alas, Europe's left knows illegals are the replacement voters Spain Amnesty one senior official said, quote, I wish for replacement theory. I wish we could sweep this country of fascist and racist replace with migrants Worse third worlders already make up a fifth of voters in countries like Britain and Germany. Close to a quarter in France or Netherlands, almost a third in Belgium Meaning you need sixty to seventy percent of native voters to win. Which is tough when media and education in Europe are captured by the leftft fortified by weaponized hate speech laws. to us next, European voters are done with mass migration Most of their governments are still fighting the voters, but cracks are showing Europe's left will fight with everything they got, but they're up against migrants who commit crimes at ten times native levels and trillions in welfare costs that even these censorship and hide Ors from our sponsor. If you own gold and many of you do You already understand how it protects your wealth from the insanity coming out of Washington Inflation, the recessions, the wars But with monetary metals, there's a way to actually earn a yield of up to four percent on your gold paid in more houses of gold. You retain ownership of real, allocated physical gold, That's no storage costs while your ounces grow every month outside the banking system If you're serious about protecting your future and building your legacy, head to monetarymedals. com slash Peter. to get started O of the best ways to secure your Bitcoin is with a hardware wallet, a physical device that lets you keep your coins offline without internet connection One of the most trusted names in hardware Wallace is Coin Kite Maker of the famous block Cock Poin kite devices are made in Canada. They're run by passionate Bitcoiners who've been at this since twenty twelve Back when Bitcoiners were trading in person at SWap meets You can pick up hardware wallets and plenty of other goodies at coinkite. com slash prof Saintange That's CO n kIe dot com slash propset Oange. Okay, back to our show Are the days numbered for the human resources department, that crusher of excellence, spawnter of Pown police Henmaiden of Leviathon Last week, X was positively electric with news that once mighty Silicon Valley Darling Bolt laid off its entire HR department saying it quote created problems that didn't exist Shockingly, everything got better. Now this follows Elon Musk famously nuking the Twitter HR department and also finding less is more certainly when it comes to the HR goblins In Bolt's case, the company had gone from eleven billion valuation to three hundred million ninety seven percent off. as the culture went from spritely start upp to HR compliance Hell The founder returned to pull an Elon firing a third of the company and replacing HR with a lean and mean people's ops limited to benefits and payroll. Managers were empowered to resolve issues without involving HR and he jettison the now mandatory Fortune five hundred ideological commissar. that imposes cohesion crushing diversity, manufactures grievances and acts as a shadow management Undermining actual managers whose job is to get stuff done instead of diversity engineering and hall monitoring wrong thing The CEO positively gushed, saying the culture instantly flipped to its mission driven startup routes with less bureaucracy and nimble decisions Reevences out performance is in. So the background is corporate HR has metastasized into an eighty eight billion dollar tape wororm contontributing to administrative bloat that costs up to three trillion in lost output. That's about ten thousand dollars in lost wages per worker. Despite left wing academics desperately trying to find DEI wins Research shows pretty much everything Corporate HR does is catastrophic to performance and employee motivation One study found choosing teams by race dramatically lowers performance, they spend most of their time getting on the same page instead of doing the work. Turnover from diversity hires alone costs sixty four billion a year. that's not including the damage they did while they remained employed with lawsuit armor One study of eight hundred and twenty nine firms found diversity training reduces Wen and minorities in management presresumably it leads to bad hires who have to be replaced fast Notherher foundound diversity training has zero impact on bias but strongly reduces employee trust People are walking on eggshells, which makes them less likely to collaborate with diverse colleagues Flow itself becomes less diverse. One major study found negative ROI to training programs, they make employees worse with nearly all positive effects fading within twenty four hours the sum to a one third drop in productivity, according to the Council of Economic Advisors And then the gold standard companies that implement ESG underperform by fifty to seventy five percent One sample by Kiplinger found just four point three percent stock returns versus sixteen for the entire S and P five hundred. that's equivalent to lighting half to three quarters of the company on fire for diversity programs that apparently workers, less diverse to a six HR will not go without a fight. Diversity experts making two hundred a year to police pronouns will burn it down with lawsuits before they go dry for Uber But it's hard to argue with a fiftycent to seventy five percent reduction in stock performance when corporate boards have a legal duty to maximize shareholder returns So far, it's just the companies with ninety seven percent stock crashes or Elon Musk taking over Every other corporation is one shareholder lawsuit away from flushing the entire HR parasite is the second richest man in the world turning into the next Eon In an interview last week, Jeff Bezos of Amazon went full populace arguing to slash government spending, government control and end all taxes for everybody under seventy five thousand dollars Prays President Trump as, quote, mature and disciplined framing support for the president as being quote on the side of America and giving a full throated endorsement of capitalism versus socialism Now Bezos has been moving this direction for a while. He was rapidly anti Trump in his first term but has since warmed not just to Trump, but to populism. He already moved to Florida for the taxes last year. He announced the Washington Post, which he owns would be henceforth advocating quote free markets and individual liberties As opposed to the communist deep state the post used to advocate He infuriated its liberal readers by refusing to endorse anybody in the twenty four election, which his readers read as a rebuke Du Kamala Now this is all risky in Silicon Valley where saying nice things about Trump can end your career and certainly ends the dinner party invites But then being worth two hundred fifty billion gives you some leeway And it matters because Elon Musk has done more than Congress, second only to Trump, for markets and free expression blended to have another cook in that kitchen Bezos kicked off his interview by correctly noting that we've got two economies. someome call it a case shaped economy with lots of people doing great, but millions suffering. But the kicker is unlike socialists who want more government control and more taxes, Bezos wants less Starting with ending taxes on anybody making less than seventy five thousand year, which would cost shockingly little, just three percent of federal revenue He rejects hiking taxes on billionaires to cover it, as you'd expect, saying the government has a spending problem, not a revenue problem And then the other half, government control and regulations. Bezos cited housing where federal policy drives up prices with subsidies for mortgages while strangling supply with zoning and building regulations an education, where he noted that New York schools spend forty four thousand dollars per student yet half would require remedial reading in math if they were to go to college Finally crony capitalism, Bezos cited the ten thousand page long tax code lovingly bought by corporate lobbyists and the billions Washington hands to corporations You didn't get into the NGO industrial complex that siphons your life savings to left wing rioters and leering centers But he did note that for profit businesses do much more for the world than charities After all, to build a successful business, you have to make people's lives better, whether it's McDonald's, Walmart, Amazon, SpaceX T build a successful charity, you just have to grab enough money And not fix the problem that would end the donations So a sex most of my listeners will not be surprised by anything Bezo said It's great to see the Elon bundle spread free enterprise small government, less corruption and less government control Dozens of billionaires, many formerly left wing, have now come on side, including interternet pioneer Mara Andreeson who was terrified by government control of AI Larry Allllison, who just bought Paramount and CNBC and a dozen others who worry more about the economy. than pronouns E Mark Zuckerberg seems like he's waiting his wife's permission to hang out with Trump We'll see if Bezos gets as hands on as Elon, but it's encouraging billionires are finally turning against the communists who would hang them the like Post I order from our sponsor. Stocks and even gold are all over the place. If you're ready to diversify abundant mines makes Bitcoin mining simple. transparent and human You can deduct every penny thanks to Trump's big beautiful bill. It's a four hundred one K for Bitcoin mining Founded by husband wife teeam Bowen, Christine Marray Turner after losing half a million dollars to broken promises in the mining industry Abundant mines was built to protect investors You own the machines and they make it turnkey with hosting in their facilities in Oregon. Pricing is clear with one flat monthly fee and no surprises they guarantee uptim so you keep burnning day in, day out. If want easy diversification without pressure, learn more at abundantminds. com slash Peter to get some of your first Bitcoin mine for free as a gift to my audience The biggest risk in Bitcoin isn't volatility, it is custody Because Bitcoin removes the safety net, there is no bank to call, no reset button if something goes wrong The reality is most people are not properly set up. They hold Bitcoin but rely on exchanges, incomplete wallet setups, and have no real plan for privacy or inheritance is exactly what the Bitcoin wayay solves. They help you move from exposure to actual ownership seelf custody done right, privacy, inheritance, even running your own node all set up with you step by step They never touch your Bitcoin, they're your sport team. Go to thebitcoinway. com slash Peter to book a free call. and go from where you are today a much stronger setup. Now back to our show Is the Iran warar telling us our economy is broken This has been a very weird war for markets, breaking the century long rule that war is bad for stocks, good for bonds, and rocket fuel for gold Instead, since America started rocking the Kaspa stocks, roule bombs duel, gold got thrown off a roof So what changed and should we be worried? When the Iran War kicked off, Wall Street predicted a nineteen seventies disaster when stocks dropped by half, inflation took off into the double digits and GDP plunged the dreaded stagflation turnurn gold into the go to late night infomercial Analysts called Iran, quote, the worst nightmare we thought could ever happen incomparably worse than any oil shock in history Reuters's poll of analyst predicted one hundred fifty dollars oil and unnamed Saudi officials said one hundred eighty option markets said two hundred or two forty oil. Longime markets guru Edyard Denny warned of a stock market meltdown Bnd guru Mohammed E Aran warned of quote stagflation gripping the entire world economy Moody's analytics pegged fifty percent odds of a recession. Their script was the nineteen seventies oil crisis when stocks did plunge by half, bonds held up with three percent gains and gold positively sang up seventy percent. But turns out every bit of that was wrong. Three months into the war, the S andP is not down by half. It's up eightight and a half percent, which is forty percent annualized. The longong bond is actually down, annualized twenty percent. gold is down twelve percent, annualized fifty. The Wall Street Journal was mystified writing, quote, It's hard to overstate just how unusual this is So a change, the first difference is oil did not get hit nearly as hard as expected. We' at one hundred not two hundred forty This is because new drilling above all in America and a collapse in Asian demand above all in China means fully three quarters of the interrupted supply was effectively canceled either new drilling or less is being used But the other reason is the stock market in twenty twenty six is not the market in the nineteen seventies, namely AI and tech. O the stock market, and frankly they don't give a damn about Iran It celeustrate the nineteen seventies tech was five percent out of the market, but almost half was oil sensitive sectors, industrials, utilities, materials, manufacturing Today, tech is half the S andP and seventy percent of the NASDAQ Oil sensitive is less than a fifth. Health carere financials make up the rest. So in the seventies, we were deeply dependent on oil we did not have Today, we don't need oil, but we're swimming in it, exporting millions of additional barrels. Put it together and recession risk is actually lower than when the war started. According to Prict Market Kolshi, we were at twenty two percent odds. A recession this year before the war, now we're down to seventeen Meanwhile, the volatility index, Wall Street's fear gauge is also lower than when the war started Even though oil futures say oil will stay high into twenty twenty seven Now this all leaves one final mystery why bonds and gold are sucking, and the reason is in the nineteen seventies fear dominated both so called safe haven demand Today, the Fed dominates, namely fears the Fed will panic hike on oil prices With hurts bonds and guts gold sends higher yields tempt gold bugs into paper. to a next Better or worse the Iran war showed, our economy is no longer made of stuff you can drop ono your foot It's made of tech More important, it reinforced the pattern since COVID that reality no longer matters, the Fed matters Things go bad, they'll shoot money till everything goes up. That was COVID. And in wartime, markets don't care about the bombs or the oil, they care about the Fed That's not healthy But it's reality Thanks for tuning in. Rember to subscribe so you don't miss an episode and go to Petersans. com for daily videos and in depth articles. with charts and all the gory details. Okay We'll be watching See you next time