Tracy Alloway and Will Sommer: A Cabinetful of Clueless Grifters

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We can get all over the back end and the front end. And as soon as you start, we'll be happy about it. We'll be happy about it soon. Then we'll be happy about it again. It's just the right time.

Our whole story is over. Now let's start our test on Shopify. [Music] Hello and welcome to the Bollock Daily. I'm your host Tim Miller.

In segment one, we're going to be discussing yield curves and bond markets. And if such matters overheat your brain, like they do mine, we're going to do our best to make it fun. And as a special bonus, like as a gift, in segment two, I'm bringing will summer on. And we're just going to discuss mega world craziness, like it's a bravo show. All right, so you'll get a little bit of brain dessert and segment two.

But first, help us navigate the world of bond vigilantes and Scott, best since stepping on rakes.

And I'd like to welcome back to the show with the co host of Bloomberg's OddLots podcast. Tracy Alley, hey Tracy. Hey, how's it going? I love that my appearance here comes with a disclaimer. We might fry your brain, but it'll all be okay in that end.

Yeah, it's like when Jason Calacanis comes on. We've got to do a big wind up to warm people up at the beginning, but it's surely the people of Tracy far more than Jason. I want to explain the impetus fee coming on. I was on social media and I saw a picture. And on this picture, it was a man.

Looks like maybe like a 1950s beat neck kind of. He's in Asheville. He's carrying a walking stick and he has a sign for passers by and the sign says this.

Scott Bessant, colon yield curve control will never work. You gay pedo.

And I was like, I think I'm interested in the message he's sending, but I don't understand it. And I've seen a number of other stories on this. And I was like, I need Tracy Alley to come on and explain this sign to me. Like she is an Instagram finance influencer and I'm a dummy trying to understand what's happening in the world. Can you do that?

I mean, I will do my best. The first thing I'll say is you know that the bond market has become big news when protesters are holding actual signs, screaming about yield curve control, right? And it's gone mainstream. Finally, this is the moment I have lived for. Okay, so I mean, where should I even begin?

“Let's see, the first thing you need to know is that bond yields so rates that are paid on US government debt reached a 19 year high recently,”

which basically means people are more reluctant to buy US government debt and to finance the US Treasury and all it's spending, then they have been previously.

So there's a little bit of nervousness out there in the market. In general, governments do not really like their bond yields going up for seemingly no reason. And then out of nowhere, we had Treasury Secretary Scott Basin come out and make the announcement saying that in the name of market liquidity, and we can get into what exactly that means, he was going to buy back even more Treasury bonds and replace them with short term debt. And his whole thinking, his rationale behind that was this magic word liquidity, which you can think of as ease of trading in the market or market functionality.

But the weird thing was that the market, the US Treasury market was pretty much functioning very normally on that day. And so what most people thought when they saw this announcement was that it's not that the Treasury market isn't functioning right. It's that the Treasury is uncomfortable with the current price of US debt, and they want to bring those yields down. And so the people that are buying the US debt usually are what foreign banks, individuals, investors like who is buying the debt. You named a bunch of them just then, but the interesting thing about the buying base for US Treasury is that it's changed quite a bit over the years.

So it used to be think about other central banks in the world, like your China and your maintaining stability of your currency.

“In order to do that, you have to buy US treasuries, and I'm sure all your listeners have heard about this idea of China holding a big stock pile of US treasuries.”

If you're a central bank managing your reserves or your currencies, you will be buying lots of treasuries. Now, alongside that, there's your normal investor, right? Everyone from you and me, if you have a Treasury direct account to pension funds, insurers, hedge funds. What's really interesting about the Treasury market in recent years is, if you look at the proportion of the different buyers in that buyer base, it's changed a lot.

And there are a lot more what we call price sensitive investors, so think like hedge funds, private investors, who are buying treasuries because they think it's a good investment because they like the price. Now, what's happened because of that is that the price that they are asking for treasuries, the return for that investment has gone up.

And so we've seen the rates on US treasuries, the yields start to go up more. Basically, you used to have this pool of huge buyers who had to buy treasuries and now you don't.

“Now, you have to convince them that buying US government debt is a good deal.”

And as a result of that, we've seen yields start to go up investors are saying, actually, this isn't such a good deal unless I get a higher return in the form of those higher yields. All right, so for the brain fried out there, when you say the yields is higher, like what that means functionally for like regular people is that the interest rate that they're paying on debt is higher, right? So your mortgage rate is higher, your car interest rate is higher, like that's that sort of means. That's right, and the interest rate that the US treasuries is paying to its borrowers is higher, they have to pay more in order to get people to buy the debt.

So back to the sign yield curve control will never work. Is that true? Did it work? Did Scott Besson do anything for people by purchasing this debt?

All right, so it's sort of mixed up here because Scott Besson is saying one thing. He's saying that he's doing this in order to improve the market functioning market liquidity. Now, as I said, there were no signs when he announced this at the market was functioning in any disorderly way. It was a very normal what some people would call a boring day in the treasury market, despite that spike in longer term yields. It had the effect when he made the announcement, it had the effect of bringing longer term yields down for like two minutes this lasted, but when people talk.

So if you like in that two minutes, you wanted to get a 30, 30 year mortgage, like you got a little bit better of a deal, like a half an afternoon. You got a lower rate, which is where the treasury wants to see. So people were encouraged to buy the debt, but on the other hand, so this is where yield curve control comes in.

So you bring the longer term yields down and you, well, hopefully don't bring shorter term yields up, but you basically you're trying to flatten the curve.

Okay, this is the financing curve of the US treasury. That is yield curve control. However, as I said, by the next day, bond yields were up where they were before the announcement. And so it really doesn't seem to have worked in this particular timeframe, which is why presumably we've seen Scott Besson since come out and start talking about other things that the US treasury could do like buy back even more debt. Use the treasuries reserve account to do that. We had an incredibly amusing clip of President Trump who was asked about bond market intervention.

And he basically said the final boss of bond market intervention is somehow military intervention, which I don't think. The ultimate intervention is our military. And if we have to use that, we will. How does that work? Was that just be like, is there a guy in charge of the gun of the bond market? And we could just send the Marines in and put a gun to his head and be like, lower the yields. Lower the yield now. You'll be unsurprised to hear that there isn't.

I'm not aware of any president in the history of the United States who has threatened the bond market with military intervention.

“If you take Trump statement at face value, which, you know, I think mostly we should take Trump statements at face value.”

No idea how that's supposed to work. Still James Carville quote, that he used to think that if he was reincarnated, he wanted to come back as president. But then he realized he wanted to come back as the bond market, just bond market can intimidate anybody, including presidents. And that's kind of like what we're at right now on this. I think every bond correspondent in history has at some point used that quote in a column.

They have like sitting on their desk. But the reason is it's true. There are plenty of governments out there that have been toppled by the bond market if nothing else. And you think back, I mean, we have recent examples in the form of lose trust in the UK who got outstated after going through a bond market crisis. So it can happen. The bond market can be a scary thing for governments precisely because it's difficult to control. It's not impossible to influence, but it's very difficult to control.

Okay, so Trump might send in the military might send in the Marines to intimidate.

“I submit be choose charge to the bond market. I don't know. I assume that's what he has in this side.”

But what we know is what's happening in Trump's brain. Best in as a slightly more complicated plan, I guess, as of yesterday, this is Charlie Gasparino.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bess, and we'll do whatever it takes to quote, put the fear of God into the bond vigilantes.

Shorting the long end of the curve and attempt to drive the 10 year yield to 5% while street executives The drug knowledge of us thinking say that would include buyback selling short-term debt, possible elimination of long-dated bonds like the 20 year, etc. It's a short-term solution to keep yields from soaring further, strangling growth as the mid-terms approach they say. Gotts.

Yeah, so we should be asking the question. Why is the superiority for the Treasury Secretary at this particular moment in time?

“And the truth is that the Treasury market is the benchmark interest rate against which all others are judged.”

So mortgage rates are priced off of U.S. Treasury. So if Treasury yields are spiking, those Treasury rates are going up, so is your mortgage rate, right? Which is probably not what Republicans want to see ahead of the mid-terms.

There's also the question of the relationship between the stock market.

So we have all these huge AI companies that are financing themselves selling debt at really unprecedented rates. And they're growth also depends on what U.S. treasuries are doing at the moment. They need to be able to fund themselves cheaply if they're going to keep growing, if stock prices are going to keep going up, so that Trump can still take credit for the stock market. So everything's kind of interrelated.

What you don't want to see is a huge spike in bond yields that not only increases the Treasury's funding costs, but also starts making its way into, I guess, the popular mind in the form of higher mortgage rates, and maybe a stock market dislocation. Yeah, the interesting part of that at the end was the strangling growth.

“Because question is, okay, what are the actual ways to get interest rates lower, right?”

I mean, if it looks like the recession indicators or the Fed will lower rates. Here's a crazy idea. I think we could probably issue less debt with something. The Trump administration said it was a priority at the beginning. They had a whole program around this called do or city on musco. So it's supposed to be in charge of where we're going to get our books more aligned.

But that's it, right? I mean, those are the options. Those are like the real options on the table besides the gimmicks. Policy makers are nothing of not creative, so there are a few more. All right.

So if you are a government struggling with high debt, how do you get that debt down? Okay, the easiest way is you grow your way out of debt.

“Grow faster than your stock of debt is increasing.”

That sounds nice, but, you know, kind of hard to do. It's a great idea. The problem we are also doing tariffs. I saw that we're rescinding a record number of visas for tourists and businesses from immigrants. We're doing a lot of things to stifle growth. Yeah, there's a little thing.

So that option is a little challenging. There's a lot of cognitive dissonance, let's say, in some of these economic policies. So, okay, put growth aside. Like, we're not going to do that.

The second one is you could have higher inflation and you are road away the debt.

All right. Like, the value of a hundred dollars that you owe from ten years ago is less than, is a lot less than, you know, the value now. You just eroded away through high inflation. We know from the past six years experience that Americans really hate inflation. Trump was basically, you know, voted in because people seem to really hate inflation.

So let's assume that we're not going to do that. The third way is actual fiscal consolidation. So reduce the debt, which you just pointed out. So raise taxes, lower spending, all that kind of basic stuff. Turns out that's politically unpopular too, right?

People don't like to see entitlement programs that they've been paying into for years and years suddenly go away. So that's a tough one as well. And we've seen through things like the one big beautiful bill that Trump doesn't really seem that interested in consolidating debt. And so you're left with, let's see, the fourth and final way, which is what we call financial repression. And this is stuff like yield curve control.

It's stuff like finding ways to force investors to hold your debt at lower yields. And it can be anything from the yield curve control type stuff that we just described to things like, you know, Scott Besson intervened in the Japanese. Yeah, and recently, and as part of that, the way he did it was he intervened in a way that discouraged Japan from actually selling a bunch of its treasuries to protect its currency. Or it can be something like, you tell the banks that they need to hold a bunch more treasuries to satisfy regulatory rules.

So there's stuff like that that generally falls under the umbrella of financial repression that governments can do. The problem with that is someone is still losing out in that scenario. And it's usually, you know, investors, pension funds. People who aren't earning as high a return on their debt investments as they could be otherwise.

It's really hard if you're an average person on the street to say that like, I am losing out because some bank has been forced to hold more US debt.

It's much more, I guess, salient to you if you're living through high inflation or if your social security has been cut or something like that. So this is now way out of my depth. As texting my father this morning, he knows about this stuff, sides and dad questions don't come into you. Is that really the kind of the redemption issue with private credit? Is that like this idea that, you know, investors. I have restrictions now on how much they can redeem is that that or is that a different thing. It's a separate issue, but I guess spiritually it's kind of similar.

“You're like, you're forcing investors to hold the debt at prices, they wouldn't hold it otherwise. So for instance, you're telling a bank, you have to hold a certain percentage of your assets in government bonds.”

And so you build up like a forced buyer base for government bonds at lower yields and that has the effect of reducing the treasuries interest rates or interest rate expenses, I should say. All right, so we're going to come back to the interest rates, you're going to Jackson Hole. We're talking to the Fed. Before we do that, I do just feel like I have to put a pin on the sign.

We covered why yield curve control will never work. You said it's a little bit.

It's a little bit more nuanced than sign man has to say about that, but generally we kind of covered. The way they won't fit on a sign, but directionally I think he's probably right.

“We didn't really cover you gay pedo. Do you know what he said? Do you know what the accusation is there? It must be absteen related.”

My opinion is there's plenty to say about the bond market itself without getting into ad homin and attack. So, you know, let's just focus on the debt mechanics.

Okay, that's not just as the gay. I felt like I could cover that. We did we hate gay on gay crime though.

All right, so you're going to Jackson Hole, where there's symposium on the Fed, what's having with interest rates will be discussions back to Tim's dad text. And by the way, I guess I don't want to out and I'm going to embarrass him right now in the podcast. I'm about to jump curious. I'm not any more really, but you know, like this not not a live finance guy. Everything Trump is doing is putting more pressure on inflation interest rates. We've been blessed to out a lot of things that are happening, which is whether that be tariffs, some of the stuff we've been discussing. So simultaneously, this is the disconnect we were talking about earlier.

Like Trump says you want to see interest rates be lower. Got goings to point to Kevin Warrish and say lower rates. But like all of the policy choices that he's making are making that more challenging. Is that a fair assessment of the state of play? I think that's absolutely fair. I mean, inflation, we've seen signs of inflation building and a bunch of that is either through tariffs or through the war in Iran, which is pushing up energy costs, which is like the one thing that you wouldn't want to increase if you were actually concerned about bringing inflation down.

How do you think wars are going to navigate that? I mean, it's sort of like one of these things are like, I don't know, maybe they screwed up that enough that the economy gets into recession and he can lower rates because of that. But you know, that there are other things happening, whether it be the AI investment boom, et cetera, you know, things that are keeping the complicated American economy churning enough that we're not really getting into recession territory. And so he's kind of stuck, right?

Like we have this in persistent relatively low, but annoying level of inflation.

“And you know, and policies, the transformation places are making it worse. And so I think a lot of assumptions are maybe rates even go up, right?”

Yeah, I mean, all I can say is I'm expecting the mood at the Jackson Hole large bar to be more awkward, let's say, than in some previous year. I actually think it's one of the more interesting meetings that we've seen. So Jackson Hole, it's the Kansas Feds annual symposium. And what it really is is a research conference. So a bunch of policy makers get together and they present papers and they discuss them, but what it's known for is having the fed share of the time come out and make a big speech on Friday.

So one really knows what that speech is going to be, although, you know, in recent times, we've had Powell who used it as basically another policy speech. The theme of this year's Kansas Feds symposium, by the way, which no one is talking about is like financial innovation and payments. You could not choose like a less zeitgeist topic for monetary policy. So just ignore that bit. All eyes are going to be on wash. The problem that Kevin Worsh is facing is that he's coming in at a time when inflationary pressures seem to be building when the president has explicitly said that he wants lower rates.

And so there's attention there, right? There's also attention that Worsh himself seems to have gotten himself into because in his last press conference when the Fed decided to hold.

He wants the market to kind of be the ball in the game of the global economy. Take the ball and run with it. Don't worry so much about what the Fed is doing.

The problem is that now you have the treasury, which is trying to manipulate the bond market. And so it's very tough to tell the market, tell investors that actually, you know, like just go do your own thing ignore what all the policy makers are doing. And so what people are going to want to see on Friday is more clarity about how the Fed is thinking about stubbornly high inflation. You know, we've had three to four percent inflation for years and years now. That is above the Fed's two percent target.

People are trying to understand how the Fed is treating the relationship, the trade-off between unemployment and inflation. The market didn't seem to like Worsh's explanation of how he's thinking about that about that relationship back in July. The opportunity for him to clarify, but it's coming at a time when the treasury market is explicitly trying to get yields down and it's coming at a time when Trump has said that he thinks rates are artificially too high. And so it seems like a very, very tough job for Worsh to kind of thread that needle on Friday. And I suspect what we're going to end up getting is a speech that's basically all about AI and productivity and how that will lead to deflation in the long term.

So maybe the Fed doesn't have to move that high to curb inflation. Now, I suspect that's going to be his outcard, but we'll find out.

“If you're just guessing Tracy Crystal Ball, you see flat rates, slight increases, like what do you think's coming?”

So who the hell am I?

I mean, who knows, right? The problem is, every time the treasury is buying back more longer data debt, it's issuing more short term debt.

And so it doesn't want short term interest rates to go up either, which is exactly what the Fed would have to do if it was hiking in order to decrease inflation. So I guess we'll see. I mean, again, Worsh is in this incredibly difficult position where he's basically talked about how he doesn't want the market to be interfered with by policy makers. At the same time that we have the treasury market very obviously interfering with investors and we have Trump also, you know, sort of jaw-boning about interest rates on the other side.

So.

“What's your, you know, kind of view about like economy right now, like macro was? I mean, like you look at it and you know, I think that there's what this is one of those things where.”

Like Trump is in a similar situation to where all like a lot of Biden people were, if you listen to the Trump people talking about the economy where they're like, you know, I don't know, the market's going up. And it's like unemployment, like take up a little bit. It's still pretty low, like historically speaking, and yet people feel terrible about the economy, like the persistent inflation. I think it's made it really hard for working class people people in the bottom, like two quintiles. And but even like the upper middle class is no, I cost or expense, everything's expensive, you know, I think they're kind of complaining about how much everything costs, you know,

boy, first class plane ticket and a, and then fancy hotel these days, it's cost and more than ever. Let me tell you, you hear that complaint a lot.

“And so, you know, I had, how do you kind of make sense of, you know, that like the, like the chart still going up in the stock market with everybody feeling a lot of concern about the broader economy?”

I mean, in my mind, the big change between the Biden administration and the Trump administration in terms of the economy is what's going on with AI and the hyperscalers. And it feels like so much of US economic growth right now is being driven by the data center build out and by big tech essentially. And there aren't that many people who are enjoying that process or who are winning because of it. People with lots of stocks have seen their portfolios go up quite a lot. That's true. And in fact, there's an argument as well that one of the reasons that US consumption has kept going up even as inflation pressures start to build again even as gas prices get higher is because people who have stocks are, you know, enjoying that windfall.

But what worries me is the sort of circularity there where big tech is doing well building out data centers stock prices go up US economy keeps growing. And that then goes back to big tech still building data centers like it feels very. It's circular in a lot of ways. And this might be one reason why the US Treasury and the Trump administration itself is so focused on bond yields at the moment because a big vulnerability for the AI build out is those financing costs right.

And that's when you get the big, you know, economic hit. I think that's probably what they're worried about.

It's kind of circular in two ways, right? Like it's circular that like the money is being slashed around as being passed kind of a small group of people and, you know, as you mentioned, like a lot of, you know, the rest of us sort of the rest of regular Americans aren't benefiting from that. I don't know, only seeing the costs and this partially explains kind of the backlash against data centers. It's also kind of circular in a literal way like the financing of all this is very circular. What, what you're taking that like as an amateur outside or I kind of read some of these stories about like how, you know, open AI is financing all this stuff and it feels.

“It feels very perpetual motion machine to me in the sense that like it's fine as long as it keeps going, but what happens when it eventually stops.”

I mean, look, there's lots of talk right now about hidden leverage of the big tech companies, so balance sheet commitments, borrowings that you can't actually see.

And there's a lot of work being done on this now because again, it's mostly hidden, so for instance, if you're a hyperscaler, if you've signed a bunch of commitments to build data centers, a lot of those don't actually show up on your balance sheet until the data center is operational. So you have all these forward commitments for data centers, but they're not included in your sort of official balance sheet, so your financial health looks better than it does. And some of those numbers are crazy, but like even the official numbers are kind of crazy, so I really think a lot of people not just, you know, in general, but in finance specifically haven't yet appreciated just how much debt the big tech companies are issuing in order to fund the AI built out.

“You could throw around specific numbers, you know, hundreds of billions, but all those numbers become really meaningless after a while because they're just so large, but just to give you some context.”

In the investment grade corporate bond market, this is where like the best companies of the US sell their debt, blue chip companies, we call them.

The big banks have historically been the predominant issuers in that market, the big banks sell billions and billions of dollars worth of investment grade debt every year. Within two or three years, the hyperscalers are expected to be as big a proportion of that market as the big banks are, so we're seeing like this revolutionary change in one of the biggest markets in the world in just two or three years. So things are changing really, really fast. Again, this isn't industry. Think about the big tech companies, the Google's meta's Facebook's of the world, whatever.

They used to be really cash rich companies. Companies like Apple had so much cash, they didn't know what to do with it. And now they're all borrowing in the market to fund this AI build out, and it's just happened so quickly. I don't think anyone has really had a chance to digest what it means. Altman saw a quote the other day where he started downgrade, you know, his assessment of his own product, you know, where he's saying, you know, three years ago, he thought that the AI was going to move so quickly that we're going to see all these results on imaginatively fast, and people weren't ready for it.

And he didn't interview the other day where he's like, well, you know, now it's going to slow that I thought getting through the economy and maybe that can be a good thing. But I watched that and I was like, it does, that does feel like a risk for the company, you know, because a lot of that, you know, debt, not an investment is based on these promises of this kind of growth that is coming in the future. I just want to kind of feel of any sort of hot takes on that about the AI bubble discourse or, you know, whether, you know, there are any concerns being raised about like what the productivity is going to match the investment debt.

This is the great hope of, you know, not just Sam Altman, probably, but Kevin Warsh at this moment in time, too, is that productivity is going to go through the roof and the U.S. economy is going to grow its way out of all this debt, all the hyper scalar debt, all the U.S. Treasury debt, all of that, and we won't have to worry about this anymore.

“I would say two things like setting the technology itself aside, you can have revolutionary technology that ends up being very difficult to monetize. And I think that's what we've seen so far, right?”

We've had models coming out of China that are a lot cheaper than the models from U.S. hyper scalars that seem to do as good a job, like pretty close. I know a lot of U.S. companies, they won't talk about it publicly, but if you get them quietly in a bar or something, they'll tell you that they're using a Chinese model like Quen or Kimmy, because it's open sorts.

And so that's the question, like we're spending a lot of money to develop these cutting-edge models. Are we going to actually be able to get enough money for them in order to pay off that debt?

“And then keep the data center boom and the broader U.S. economy actually going, and I think there's a lot of disagreement on that front still.”

There's this video of JD events for a couple years ago that started going around this past week, and enough you saw this in social media, where he was talking about how the U.S. being the dollar reserve currency is actually a resource curse, and like leads to things costing more. And he was kind of talking off the cuff, so I, you know, sometimes there's like Galaxy brain analysis of all the stuff that it's hard. I'm unsure whether he even knew what he was talking about, but there's some worries, right, like any Peter Teele has talked about, you know, kind of getting off the dollar obviously a big influence on JD events, moving more towards Bitcoin.

“I did notice this week that Bitcoin is back up, the crypto is back up again, like as kind of U.S. dollar, you know, issues arise in the bond markets.”

I guess I'm just curious what you thought about JD's comment about the dollars of currency being a little bit of a curse on us, and whether there are like legit concerns that these guys have like a 40 chess plan for moving us off it. Oh man, okay, I have not seen those comments from JD events specifically, but I mean, in general, like the dollar, the exorbitant privilege stuff has that conversation's been going on for a long time as has the idea that maybe the world is moving away from the dollar, and I think what we've seen, you know, that conversation, this idea that people aren't going to use dollars as much anymore in the future.

Kind of comes into the site, guys, every once in a while, and then it kind of flows out. It's coming back in now, right, so you mentioned Bitcoin going up last week, I'm not sure we can attribute all of that move to the dollar conversation, but we also saw gold start to rally quite significantly, and that's definitely a de-dollarization kind of idea.

“And I think the basic thinking here is like, well, if you want a reserve currency that's safe for decades, it has been the US dollar, but there are some things that have perhaps dented that appeal, not all of them have to do with Trump, by the way.”

You know, when Biden went after Afghanistan's central bank assets, that kind of boosted the conversation for a little bit, you now have Scott Bessant declaring, I don't know, some sort of economic world war on Iran through sanctions every time you get those kinds of US sanctions, you see another about of de-dollarization talk. I think the thing that people misunderstand in that conversation, because it hasn't yet happened, the dollar is still the world's reserve currency, a lot of people will just dismiss it as like, oh, no, that's, it's never going to happen.

There's so embedded in the fabric of the global economy that it's just going to be here forever, and people can't escape it for the following reasons, but in my mind, like, what we have seen is a sort of slow motion evolution to more of a multi-polar currency world, where people are looking at alternatives. Do you know that more central banks are buying gold instead of dollar-denominated assets? So there are, there are things that are there. I mean, I think they're nervous about what happens to dollar assets in the future, and again, if the US Treasury is experimenting with things like yield curve control, that often means a lower dollar will come about as a result of those policies.

There's like a bit careful at your wish for a situation. Yeah, I think so. All right, last thing with everything I like about AdLots is that you do these random things we bring in experts who, like, really know a lot about one topic, and you kind of get to learn a lot about that one topic, but, you know, you kind of brought it out to the broader impact. One of my favorite ones recently was the tungsten episode, and I hope that when there's concerns about tungsten mining, there's a rush on tungsten that usually is a precursor to geopolitical instability.

Peel should go list of the whole website, but give us the 45 seconds tungsten. All right, so tungsten is this mineral, the funniest thing about tungsten, I should say, is it one kind of viral a few years ago, among crypto bros, who for some reason got really into buying these little tungsten cubes, sometimes large tungsten cubes. So for instance, if you read the book about Sam Bankman freed, the very end of the book is Michael Lewis finding this giant rumored tungsten cube that S.P.F. was like rumored to have purchased basically just as a joke. And if you listen to the crypto bros, they said they liked tungsten because it had this very heavy material feel. It's one of the worlds, if not the world's densest material. And so if you hold even a tiny cube, it feels like you're holding.

And unfortunately tungsten prices have been rising recently and it looks like at least one tungsten mine has restarted production because prices are rising.

And it now makes finding and sourcing tungsten economical and profitable for them. And if you look at history as your guide, that probably doesn't suggest anything good about the future direction of geopolitical stability. Well, maybe there's one smart person deep inside the Department of War that's doing that, but I've got some concerns to shine. Yeah, kind of I was watching the Chinese robot Olympics and it feels like a little bit more of a long-term view happening over there than we're dealing with.

I was joking that my co-host Joe was in thought so he has a tungsten cube. He lost it and then he found it again and was very excited about it, but I keep joking with him telling him that he's just going to have to donate it to the US military efforts anyway. So he shouldn't get too attached. I will leave it there. That's Tracy Alley. I appreciate you so much for coming on here and educating us and dealing with my gay pedo jokes and enjoy Jackson Hole and hopefully we'll catch well actually hopefully we won't catch you again soon because I usually call you and things are going well.

But I'm sure we will be seeing you again soon. All right, thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it Tracy. I'm next. We'll some.

“All right. We are back. He is the author of the must read falsified newsletter honestly.”

If you have not subscribed to the falsified newsletter at thebore.com, what are you doing? It is of course well summer. Hey, well. Hey, thanks for having me. We got to hang out in person for people who miss this. It's a summer. We've put out a lot of content to people miss things. Will and I took a tour of DC. We went to kind of maga landmarks places where the aforementioned Secretary Scott Besson gotten to some fifth to cuffs at a private club. With the bright burden to see, you know, we went to a bunch of places around town. Showed people have invented DC. What that's like. The feedback was mostly about Will's arms because people get to see Will.

Yeah, there it is outside of the little box and he's more mussel even people expected. I also noticed that. Joe check it out. If you missed it, it was pretty good. I felt like we left some meat on the bone. I feel like we might have to do another one. What do you think?

I was thinking, like, you know, it's first administration. We didn't go to where the proud boys were supposedly doing coke and stole a Republican congressional candidates girlfriend.

I think there's a lot of opportunities left over. The master baiting guy. Yeah, the animal. The hour he was cranking his hog to the acrobat. You know, we got scarlet oak where, you know, the young staffers are getting drunk all the time. So yeah, a lot of opportunities there.

“I'm back in DC at the end of September. Let us know if you want to see more of that. It's interesting.”

The executive transportation you think would have more stuff than it was. And like, we're podcasters did kind of a video series on the road of his own. A road trip was funded by people that he's supposed to regulate and our tax dollars. He got to bring his whole family nice deal if you're in the cabinet. You wrote a newsletter while back about how like they made a big stink about this and then didn't actually have a really put it out. Or maybe because gas prices are so high. They don't want to draw attention to the fact that regular people can't go in road trips. They finally did put it out. They dumped it on to YouTube, all the episodes in one sitting.

If you added up the views of every episode, I don't think it matches the views for our tour of DC. So they're not exactly lighting the world on fire on YouTube, but I'm wondering what you, you want, you were one of the few, the proud that watched the series. Anything of no. Oh, it was so good. You guys are missing out. Yeah. So it's called great American road trip. It's very weird even by kind of like the standards of like a mega media artifact. From the promotion and as you said, this was supposed to come out in June. It came out, you know, a what last week.

“After I think maybe my newsletter saying, look, it's bad for bowing and all these transportation companies to send the Secretary transportation on a trip with his family for a show.”

It's way worse if the show never comes out because then they just got free trips for no reason. So it did come out.

And I thought it was going to be kind of like go to the Grand Canyon, go to Philadelphia and see in the pen and tall. There's a little bit of that. But like a lot of it is just about like interpersonal drama in the Duffy family down to John Duffy's like 10 year old kid gets constipation and has to go to the hospital.

I mean, like this is kind of the next time you go online and look at how much an airplane ticket costs and then you go to the airport and the lines are really long and then the flight is delayed.

“I think about the fact that the secretary of transportation should be overseeing others that should be their remit instead was doing a reality show road trip where there's an entire episode dedicated to his child's constipation.”

Think about Sean's Duffy's child's constipation the next time you're in a college while traveling. I guess would be some a suggestion I might have. I mean, we have airports right now that are literally running out of fuel and Sean Duffy is is like going back to his old real world house on this show all this stuff. And I thought one could I haven't watched it. I thought one could have about how the daughter they weren't going to let her go to Harvard because she might get the woke mind virus. That was discussed as well.

Yeah, it's a funny one there. Like there are several episodes about where's the daughter going to go to college and I guess maybe originally that was kind of like the idea for the show is like they're visiting colleges and then they were like, we hate colleges. To be clear, she does not get into Harvard at any point. So it was kind of a fake story line. It was like, I might want to, you know, maybe I want to run for president. I don't know. I was kind of when I told my parents when I when they wanted me to go to Georgetown and I didn't even apply and I went to George Washington.

I was like, I don't want to go to Georgetown. Okay. I'm not interested with like meanwhile like 3.3 GPA. It was maybe all up there. Yeah, it was, you know, Georgetown wasn't the place for, you know, a young man with integrity. As Sean Duffy says they professionalized corrupting the minds of young women, you know.

“So then they go to Harvard and they meet with a Catholic priest there. This is this is very weird. You might be like, was it about road trips?”

And he's like, actually you're allowed to be Catholic at Harvard and they go, oh, wow, which is, you know, not the Donald Trump will ever know about this show's existence despite being in it himself. But like, we're going to watch it. He's like, are we like trying to crush Harvard? Why are we saying like Harvard actually isn't as woke as you might think? Fascinating program. You guys should feel feel good with Secretary Sean Duffy at the wheel. A lot of Duffy talked this week yesterday we're talking about how he apparently doesn't read or know anything about what's happening in Canada.

I want to move on. We've got some Trump Tucker stuff only get to the end, but um, you have a classic Wilson or story.

And this is the purpose that you serve in my life, first time. And I hope it's true for other people as well.

I received a text from friend of the show, Chris Krebs, American hero, this guy in the first Trump administration who was trying to keep our election safe and then Trump tried to lie and said the elections are stolen and he was like, no, it's not true. We've got a good people working in the government anyway. Chris Krebs text me is like if you've seen the data Republican story, and then sends me like seven texts that are like totally incomprehensible to me about this drama that is happening online.

And so I messaged you and I was like, are you following this? You're like, yeah, it's my next newsletter has to thank God. Thank God. I don't have to do anything. We'll explain it to me. So the newsletter starts like this.

Pro Trump Internet sleuth Genica pounds better known as data Republican to our nearly one million followers on X made a grim announcement on Friday.

Deep state operatives embedded within the Trump administration had tried to entrap her into committing treason. Tell us about that. I'm gonna snooze indeed. Yeah, so this is a leading genica pounds. She is, as I said, she's data Republican and this is, she emerged in during doge. She has no real expertise with, you know, government data or this, she's kind of just like, walk figure. And whenever Elon wanted to be like, I'm eliminating USAID, she would produce this AI written summary that would say actually USAID is a front for George Soros.

And then so Republicans were like, wow, data Republican said so it must be true. She's wrong, like constantly, she misunderstood basic things and yet they love her. And so in this case, what happened was Sarah Rogers, the Undersecretary of state for, you know, sort of like public air, you know, she handles like publicity essentially.

“And her big thing is bullying Europe into making it easier for these far right kind of to quasi Nazi parties to get traction. And so she's seen as very based important role.”

Yes, well, certainly, this is a very fancy role. So she, but secretly approach data Republican and said, look, I've got some documents on like Cuba and like anti disinformation ever during the debate, the Biden administration. And these things like really they don't, they're not real expose here, but what they were trying to do is kind of spin something up. And so they say, let's give it to data Republican. However, when data Republican gets the documents, she goes, wait a minute, this says like government document, do not distribute.

If I post this, I'll go to prison for treason. And if I hold on to it, I'm participating in the Biden cover up. So she then turns on Sarah Rogers and says, you were trying to send me to prison.

There's an interesting subplot to this, which is that they're separate, actually, but the one in particular that's not really is that Jenica, the anonymous data Republican, who said that the deep state was trying to influence her to get into trouble is herself, a member of the deep state.

“It's the plot thickens. Yes. So this is very interesting. So amid this clash and basically Sarah Rogers is like it or not for her, aligned with more Nick Fuente's America first type griper. She's represented some of them in court as their lawyer.”

And she talked about like the average differences in IQ between racial groups, you know, talked about how Europe's importing barbarian rapist towards like that. That's kind of her milk you. So that element gets really mad at data Republican. And one of their accounts says, well, this is all really weird because data Republican works for the Department of Defense. And that was like the first I had heard of that. The first a lot of people that heard of that. So then the Department of Defense says yes, data Republican is a special government employee, which is the thing where you can work for about a third of the year that Elon Musk was also under without having to go through a lot of disclosures, digests, your holdings are really like be like an official government employee. So this is very odd.

And so since I wrote that newsletter, we've made some new findings. She appears to work for the Department of Defense is thing called like the Office of Administration and Management. So it's essentially like this huge bureaucracy.

It's very difficult to know exactly what she's doing there. I asked the Pentagon about it and they said essentially like we're not going to say what her job is since she took this job in July.

“She was attacking Driscoll, the secretary of the army, who was opposed to Pete Higgs said since taking that job. So it's like, was her job some kind of like weird messaging stuff?”

To be clear, she did not disclose any of this Pentagon affiliation even as of Sunday. She said, my only affiliations are, you know, some random think tanks, nothing with the Pentagon. So it's very mysterious. And now even her fans are saying, is she the deep state operative? It seems like she is just to put a fighter put in this. So we have an anonymous mega propaganda account that is actually a taxpayer funded person of kind of unknown remit in the government.

The government won't tell us what this person is doing that we're paying while she's simultaneously advancing like false propaganda about the government's action.

So that's a pretty decent summary of what's happening with data Republican. It is, and to add one more, and that the State Department is using to drum up both sort of political ends attacking people from the Biden administration. And seemingly to kind of like beat the war drums on Cuba, because supposedly these documents were supposed to relate to Cuba. Right. So it's like one person in the government is giving another person in the government information to put out, but under their anonymous account.

Essentially this is a sock puppet account, which I kind of we use and other, this is like an intelligence tool that is used. Obviously the Russians are against us sometimes we use it in other countries, but like we're using against our own people there's like a sock puppet account within the government charged with disseminating false propaganda to influence us. And that was revealed accidentally via a megapheed. Yeah, exactly. And so it offers an interesting glimpse into sort of what's going on here. It makes me wonder what other special government employees are working at the Pentagon.

You know, it makes me wonder what other big ex-accounts have government contracts or government affiliated.

Because it feels like unlikely it's just Genica. I would say based on this performance, I would not reach first to Genica if I was looking for a sort of henchmen.

I might, if I was, you know, running propaganda at the Pentagon, I might there might be some other people. There actually were some, you know, this guy who runs like a shipping news thing who's like inexplicably also a real conservative activist, he was considered for a special government employees status at the Pentagon. So there have been these links between right wing media and the Pentagon. It sounds when you put it like that. It sounds pretty nefarious. Yeah. And I think there's a lot more to be discovered.

Yeah. I mean, I don't think that the Department of War, the government's military should be funding partisan propaganda outwats to misinform us, the American people.

“That's not really, I'm against that. Like in a free country doesn't feel like that's what should be happening. Feels like we shouldn't know who is communicating that's for the government.”

And there's a reason why they didn't put this out from spokesperson from the Pentagon or spokesperson from the Secretary of State. Right. Like that, you know, there's a reason they tried to go through a cutout, and it's like, but the cutout is somebody we're paying. Yeah. And the other thing I would add is that data Republican is she lives in Utah. She's very like sort of homebound because of some disabilities as I understand it or, you know,

Right. Right. Just a couple other little interesting subplants. I noticed from your stories, one to raise.

She's become such a figure on the right that her mom also has an account mom of data Republican. That gets involved. And old, I feel like to call him a nemesis would be to overstate it. A old antagonist of mine, Ricky Vaughan. He had a he also had a sock public account named Ricky Vaughan after the major league character. He ended up going to jail, which I was an unhappy about at all. And then is now out of jail. I guess he was he's back in the game. He was wrapped up in this somehow. Yeah. He was represented by Sarah Rogers during his criminal case.

And so he's one of these people who's saying, you know, Sarah's so based, you know, boomer brain, you know, data Republican, you're screwing this all up.

Yeah. Sarah didn't nail that criminal case thing is he lost the one thing I would add about mom of data Republican. Mm-hmm. Confusingly goes by the handle data Republican on X. She, she's very obviously defensive about her daughter. And so she ends up to Sarah Rogers, you know, my daughter is not quote naturally cunning like you kind of like, you know, whatever you'm flying here. And now, but now that the Pentagon job has been exposed, mom of data Republican was saying, people on the right act like it's bad to be a fed.

But what is a fed? An employee of the federal government, which really represents all of us in many ways being a fed is a good thing.

When mom is on Twitter saying their adult daughter is not that cunning.

“That's probably not a great sign that that's the person you should be using for your subterfuge, if you have that, if you're the government.”

We'll continue to monitor this story. I know you will, but I think I'm interested on whether this is one of those things that like one string gets pulled out of the yarn ball and all of a sudden we start to learn that there's a lot more of this happening in the Pentagon. It seems like that seems likely to me anything else in that point of view under Trump and Tucker. Let's do it. Okay. Trump said that the following bleet over the weekend, which I'm going to read for you guys. Tucker Carlson just met with lightweight former congressman Thomas Massey and Marjorie Trader Green losers all Tucker's views have fallen to the floor and want to get worse.

Trump accidentally said something right there. I think nobody cares about him any longer and that he has become totally irrelevant happens to be surprisingly a very low IQ individual. Trump usually reserves that insult very low IQ individual for black people. So that tells you something about where he's going with Tucker. Tucker can barely get out of college. Trump writes and maybe he didn't, but only really dumb people can't make it through that wonderful four year time in life. Tucker wants to run for political office, but he should be required to take a cognitive test.

Like me, Tucker is a loser and always has been Marjorie Taylor Brown. We're trying to separate nickname here. Green turns to Brown under stress, a highly neurotic young woman went from ultra conservative to a liberal fool on a matter of weeks because our views return her phone calls up because I didn't like her just because I had no time. The only chance they have is to join the radical left democrats and try breaking into the primary system to all of them. I say praise be to Allah. That's the president of the United States put out that statement a lot there.

“I think that the you know, there's kind of the small ball observation that I have which is like.”

I've been 2015 you showed this to somebody and said this is 10 years in the future. They would have said that you had during events syndrome and we're an insane person and that you know it's sad or that like this is our life now people just accept us and move on. That our president is a lunatic. He's posting like a crazy drunk on call constantly on social media. We're sorry for me to find this actually because it was like three days ago and I just go through like a hundred Trump bleeds like he's still doing this. It's the small observation big observations.

It seems like they're a little concerned you know like to go this hard at Tucker about like whether this faction might actually have some juice inside the coalition. It's interesting. It was also I mean at this point it's several weeks since that meeting so it makes you wonder has Trump heard something else about Tucker's plans or are they going to do some poll or you know whatever that that has them freaking out.

“So much he's really also starting to do that praise be to all this is not the first time he's done the praise be to all the thing I remember the first time he did it got kind of a pop but I guess this is just like one of his signatures now.”

He thinks it's funny. Do you think praise it's like it's like oh I'm like making fun of Muslims but I can't do it in a little cheeky way so people can't really accuse me of being a racist I guess. Is that what I'm thinking? Well, I wonder if if it's sort of like playing on the idea that he's Tucker cattarrelson that he's like in hawk to cattar or other Muslim countries. But then again Trump flies around on the cattarry jet so it seems a little unfair to single out Tucker.

I certainly in the post world war two era and and the thing is similar on the Sharia law that like you see Greg Abbott and can pass in and now Michigan my graduate is always guys you know trying to.

Fear you know make people afraid of a good all say add or you know the Muslim candidates running on the democratic sign talking about how Sharia law is coming to the country but like.

“The people I think most aligned with Sharia is this administration. That's a great point I mean there is really totally in Texas such a just rise of this anti-Muslim sentiment.”

You know, the I saw now people are like they were freaking out because Muslims bought some land in the woods and it was for like Muslim kids to have activities and to stay during the summer and they were like what are they up to it and it's like well it sounds like what's called the summer camp right. And so so this is like never watch let hot American summer yeah it's like that just check that out but but as you said I mean it reminds me of when Laura Lumer was very upset about the category jet and Trump basically said shut up I want my jet and then she said okay yeah but you you're seeing this online like this increase in.

“You know, I mean I mean I mean anti-Muslim anti-Muslim anti-Muslim sentiment like rising because for a while I don't you know obviously like there's a lot of this after 9/11 and just like to be clear I'm no fan of Sharia law.”

I think it's concerning that our president is as friends with Sharia law dictators but like it was more than that right like they were like these really you kind of bigoted you know anti-Muslim efforts or Laura Lumeros point person and that's for a long time and now went a little dormant. There's like a period of time where like we really saw a lot of anti-Semitism rising and obviously you know a lot of focus on the invaders the Mexican invaders but and it does seem to me I don't know what do you do you feel this way too like that we've we're really seeing a spike again.

Right wing agitation against muscles. Very real I and it's surging back I mean I and I think these you know whether it's maybe a reaction to like XORon Mondamian Abdul al-Sayed in the sense to like otherwise muslims but I mean I do think for the past few years you know it it was much quieter and I think also related I think it's just like a real like hatred of people like sort of of like brown skin in general. I mean this is probably obvious observation but like there's also like a real surge in hatred of Indians and people in Pakistanis and and again a lot of that in Texas and so these are kind of like the I would say I hate to say like the hot these are kind of like the surging hates I guess as the immigration stuff for receipts for now.

Anything else you're seeing out there anything that it is us any exciting. I don't know. Kind of lawsuits or I don't know anybody are bees and anybody's pants you know anything looks forward to well you know what Alexis Wilkins the cash betel's country singer girlfriend is she's on the verge of settling her lawsuit with Elijah Schafer frequent topic of ours on the trio the kind of the filandering right wing media bad boy.

“He had accused her being a massado operative center to seduce cash petel so we'll have to see she's gonna get a big payday or is she gonna you know conceived and you know say well maybe he was right to suspect or what we'll say.”

We'll be monitoring that cork is will will be monitoring actually and he'll be briefing me and we appreciate him for his service.

Everybody goes got to falsify thanks so much to Tracy and Will if you want more politics topics. I'll be on the next level tonight. The whole crew is back together vacations are over. So come hang out with us in the next level feed and I'm sure will be coordinating a trio video later in the week. So we appreciate everybody very much. Thanks to Tracy and Will. We'll see you back here tomorrow for another edition of the podcast. The board daily is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper associate producer Ansley Skipper and with video editing by Dante de Chico and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

You can see the board daily. We'll see you back here tomorrow for another edition of lead producer Katie Cooper associate producer Ansley Skipper and with video editing by Dante de Chico and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.