World Leaders Share Their Perspective On Markets

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To investors,

World leaders had a field day yesterday sharing their opinions on a variety of topics. Rather than pick only one to write about, below is a compilation of the best hits.

First, we have President Donald Trump promising to ban central bank digital currencies if he gets back into the White House:

“Tonight, I am also making another promise to protect Americans from government tyranny. As your president, I will never allow the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency. Such a currency would give the federal government absolute control over your money. This would be a dangerous threat to freedom – and I will stop it from coming to America. We are also going to put in place strong protections to stop banks and regulators from trying to DE-BANK you for your political beliefs. That will NEVER happen while I am your president.”

This was a pleasant surprise. Most politicians and central bankers are so enamored with blockchain technology that they can’t help themselves but to start thinking about the ridiculous, nefarious ways they could leverage this innovation. Social credit scores. Personalized monetary policy. Censorship. Seizure. The list goes on and on.

Second, speaking of Trump, JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon told CNBC’s Squawk Box that Trump was right on NATO, immigration, growing the economy, tax reform, and China.

“I don't like how Trump said things, but he wasn't wrong about those critical issues. That's why they're voting for him. People should be more respectful of our fellow citizens...I think this negative talk about MAGA will hurt Biden's campaign.”

Regardless of your politics, this was very surprising to see from Jamie Dimon, but the ensuing conversation online shows that many people agree with his comments. There is a popular belief that the Overton Window has moved so far that certain things that would have been taboo, such as “Trump was right,” are now safe to say for the CEO of JP Morgan.

Third, Jamie Dimon also talked about bitcoin during the same interview. It was obvious that he felt uncomfortable being asked for the ten-millionth time about the digital currency.

“There are cryptocurrencies that do something, that might have value. And then there's one that does nothing, I call it pet rock. The Bitcoin, or something like that. It has some use cases. Everything else is people trading among themselves.”

This commentary was not surprising to me. Dimon is not a fan of bitcoin, so people should just stop asking him about it. It doesn’t matter if he is right or wrong, although it is hard to see a scenario where he will be right, because the free market is the referee. I did find it interesting that Dimon seems more excited or sympathetic to non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies though, including the idea of tokenization that BlackRock’s Larry Fink has been sharing in recent interviews.

Fourth, we have Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon sounding the alarm on the national debt situation.

"I'm very concerned about the growing debt. That's not something I think is going to come home to roost in 2024. That's one of the reasons I'm in the camp of higher rates longer as a general base case because we have to refinance this debt."

It is great to see Solomon bringing constant awareness to this gigantic problem. There is probably no more important issue for our government to solve over the long-run than what they are going to do with the national debt, especially since it seems to be growing by $2 trillion or more per year currently.

Lastly, Carlyle’s David Rubenstein shared thoughts on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s recent performance.

“I think Jay Powell will go down in history for having done a good job if he gets the inflation rate down close to 2%. I think most people would say the hard landing scenario is not something they're worried about.”

I agree with Rubenstein that Powell will be celebrated if he can get inflation back to 2% without crashing the US economy, but as I shared recently, there is a major risk to re-inflation at the moment. The government and central bank seem ready to pivot back to loose monetary policy, but Powell’s reputation may not be as positive if the economy doesn’t get back to 2%. The last percent seems to be the hardest.

These world leaders are all openly sharing their ideas. You and I can watch the videos online of their interviews and speeches, so we can see for ourselves the context and authenticity. That was unthinkable just a few decades ago.

Technology has drastically improved our lives, along with provided an immense increase in knowledge and transparency. Thanks to these advancements, I always highly suggest listening when these leaders open their mouth.

Hope you all have a great day. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.

-Anthony Pompliano

Aravind Srinivas is the Founder & CEO of Perplexity AI. Perplexity is on a mission to build the world's most known centric company.

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