AppliedMMT Podcast

#15 - Interview with Nick Gomez of ANG Traders (Part 2)

June 13, 2023 Episode 15
#15 - Interview with Nick Gomez of ANG Traders (Part 2)
AppliedMMT Podcast
More Info
AppliedMMT Podcast
#15 - Interview with Nick Gomez of ANG Traders (Part 2)
Jun 13, 2023 Episode 15

In the second part of our two-part conversation, Nick Gomez of ANG Traders joins Adam and Ryan to discuss:

  • The causes of post-COVID inflation
  • Unemployment benefits & "no one wants to work anymore"
  • The US fiscal situation in 2023 vs. 2022
  • Shortages in the housing market
  • How Nick analyzes the stock market
  • The effects of treasury issuance
  • Accounting between the Fed & Treasury
  • The relationship between treasuries and the stock market
  • Warren Mosler being denied a meeting with the Fed

Links:

AppliedMMT.com
AppliedMMT on Twitter
Douglas (@MMTmacrotrader) on Twitter

Disclaimer: The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial or investment advice. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any associated employers or organizations. Listeners should consider their financial circumstances and consult with a professional advisor before making any investment decisions

Show Notes Transcript

In the second part of our two-part conversation, Nick Gomez of ANG Traders joins Adam and Ryan to discuss:

  • The causes of post-COVID inflation
  • Unemployment benefits & "no one wants to work anymore"
  • The US fiscal situation in 2023 vs. 2022
  • Shortages in the housing market
  • How Nick analyzes the stock market
  • The effects of treasury issuance
  • Accounting between the Fed & Treasury
  • The relationship between treasuries and the stock market
  • Warren Mosler being denied a meeting with the Fed

Links:

AppliedMMT.com
AppliedMMT on Twitter
Douglas (@MMTmacrotrader) on Twitter

Disclaimer: The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial or investment advice. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any associated employers or organizations. Listeners should consider their financial circumstances and consult with a professional advisor before making any investment decisions

Ryan Benincasa:

The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial or investment advice. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and their guests. They do not necessarily reflect a position of any associated employers or organizations.

Adam Rice:

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the second part of our interview with Nick Gomez of AMG traders. If you haven't listened to the first part, I highly recommend doing that before listening to this episode, we kick off the conversation continuing our discussion about inflation and the Feds interpretation of inflation. And then we go in several different directions that are outlined in the shownotes. As always, thank you so much for listening, we hope you enjoy the episode. If you are listening on YouTube, please like or comment on the video. And without further ado, Nick Gomez of AMG traders thank you again for listening.

Nick Gomez:

Right, in which which didn't come down as fast because of monopoly monopolistic pricing of, of everything, basically. And, you know, Putin's war has had a big effect on energy prices. And, you know, inflation is most often tied to energy prices and food prices. And, like a

Ryan Benincasa:

derivative of energy. So what's that? Food is basically a derivative of Yes,

Nick Gomez:

it's true. It's true. Energy. It was a big one. And, you know, putting went into you remember how that started? Putin started lining up his troops in, in Belarus, right? Is going all there's not you know, he's not that stupid. Like, he's not going to do that. Right? Saying, Oh, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm just, you know, this is just this an exercise that the whole bit, and I was thinking, you know, that's really smart. He's he's doing this soared rattling, and gas prices are gonna go through the roof as they did, as they did. And so once gas prices, you know, doubled or more than doubled, which was, you know, Russia's main income source. I thought, okay, you know, mission accomplished Putin. All right, you know, you've just doubled your double your income, overnight. Like, what he's, he's not gonna go in there, because that'll that'll ruin everything for him. Boy, was I wrong? Yeah, I guess he thought, wow, this is easy. Show. And anyway, that's where that's where we went there. But and that, and that's the cause of that's the cause of, of the inflation, as well. And like Moser said, if, if it wasn't for the, for the raising of the interest rates, inflation would have come down quicker than it has been 100%.

Ryan Benincasa:

Yeah. That's a point that we've been making, too, is that everyone keeps asking, oh, why? Why is inflation so sticky? And well, it's because, you know, the policy rate is set. 5%. And, you know, so that adds like an upward upward kind of structure to forward prices in the economy. So and those prices are supported with the income supplied by the government paying interest on both reserves and and on new debt security. So

Nick Gomez:

a trillion dollars is going to be transferred that way.

Ryan Benincasa:

Right. Right. Exactly. You know, what I find? Fascinating to it, you know, with this recent debt ceiling, debacle and debate, is that, and obviously, you're a scientist by background, we don't really get a lot of opportunities to do like, real sort of, quote, scientific method. You know, with economics in real life. You

Nick Gomez:

can't it's impossible. Right.

Ryan Benincasa:

But, but the closest thing that we have, in my opinion, came in, I think it was it was 2020. I think it was 2020. When, you know, states were starting to reopen, we shut down the economy with COVID. And basically, some states, you know, eliminated or significantly reduced the unemployment benefits, and others didn't. And the rationale was that, you know, why are we handing money out to people bool you know, they're not incentivize to go work, right? Well, as it turns out, right, so this is kind of like this is kind of as close as you get right, you have a control group and

Nick Gomez:

I agree. I agree. Yep. And, and so

Ryan Benincasa:

with the test group, and and we posted about this, I think earlier this week, that the Washington journal, or excuse me, the Wall Street Journal. So not the Washington Post, not the New York Times, not the that the Wall Street Journal did reported, saying that the states that, you know, reduced the unemployment benefits, not only did it not help spur job growth, and actually they actually underperformed, right. I mean, it's, it's amazing that we have this literal, like, scientific experiment, and yet, we're still, you know, hearing with the recent debt ceiling stuff, like, you know, we see, you know, this deal that got passed, you know, we're cutting, we're cutting back on, you know, unemployment benefits, you know, this is going to, you know, McCarthy saying stuff like, you know, it's going to give the people the actual dignity to work and blah, blah, blah, and it's like, no, it just means that there's going to be less spending into the economy, which means that there's going to be less money that people can spend on real stuff. And so companies are going to have lower sales and lower earnings, and they're not gonna be able to hire as much as, as many jobs.

Nick Gomez:

So frustrating. On the positive side, I had said, going back a while, you know, if, unless we get significant spending cuts in order to get the pass the ceiling, unless that happens, this is going to be a massive bull market. Okay. And we didn't really get any spending cuts, not really, you know, like, insignificant, military still going to be able to grow by 3%, social security, and all those things are not being cut. You know, it's really, it's basically a Biden win on that. I know that there's some things in there that are kind of irksome, you know, like having, you know, increasing the age that people have to work for, you know, for being poor or being, you know, what I mean, like, that kind of stuff is, is just distasteful and cruel, but really significant at the macro level. So basically, well said, it hasn't really changed the spending, not really. And since the spending is about 40%, more this year than it was last fiscal year, is to grow 40% ahead, you know, how you said that, you know, the problem in 2022? Was the, you know, the tax take that, you know, drained all this money out? That's exactly right. Well, now, this year, we are are putting in net on a net basis, because I track the net transfers from the Treasury into the private, private economy on a daily basis. And the net transfers from from the Treasury to private bank accounts is up 40%. From from last year. Wow. It's up 40%. And so since that's not going to change with the deal that they just signed, it's going to stay about the same. Well, that means that you are going to be close, we're going to be approaching a $2 trillion net transfer. Right. So after the government can do only two things, Congress can spend money into existence, and you can tax it out of existence. It's as simple as that. That's, that's all. That's all it does. Okay, that's all Congress does, is it spends money into existence, and it taxes that money, some of that money back. Those are the decisions that mix. And so if they're if they're going to leave 71.7 to $2 trillion new dollars in the economy this year. You tell me how you're gonna get a recession. How is that going to happen?

Ryan Benincasa:

Right, right. I don't know.

Nick Gomez:

I don't know. So that's why I keep telling my people I go you know, like it's not it's not Linear does get you know, there's there's pullbacks, but at this point, you're buying the pullbacks. Right?

Ryan Benincasa:

Right. Right? No, that makes a lot of sense. And that's something that Adam and I have discussed too, is it? That doesn't mean that every single industry is going to go up, like, oh, we we certainly had a boom, in 2020 and 2021, after the fiscal, the fiscal spending impulse, you know, made its way through the economy. That doesn't mean that, you know, airlines and, and cruisers and hotels and restaurants did well, those those sectors performed horribly, right, because they, because of the, the the realities of the pandemic and the impact on consumer spending behaviors during that period. Now, that's kind of flipped, right, all the spending on on durable goods, and, you know, other things, other discretionary purchases of similar nature, that's all slowing, and, you know, the service stuff is booming right now. And so, that to me, it's, you know, people, people will just kind of cherry pick, oh, no, you got the, the PMI the you know, that we're the freight market. And, and it's sort of like, look, yeah, there's gonna be, there's gonna be ebbs and flows, there's gonna, you know, companies are gonna order too much inventory, and they're gonna have to, to, you know, do more discounting to clear it, and, yeah, that that is going to happen, but because we live in an uncertain world, but the but but, you know, it's all about an aggregate and an aggregate, right, when you get that that kind of spending impulse, you know, corporate earnings, corporate earnings are gonna be up. Yeah,

Nick Gomez:

absolutely. And they're gonna be up starting very soon, actually.

Ryan Benincasa:

And, and that's where, and that's what drives capital investment, too. Right? Is that because, you know, they have to spend out of their, you know, as their their profits? So, exactly. You know, it's, it's really not, it is frustrating to hear people say, and, you know, there's other people, you know, working, you know, real estate or something, it's like, oh, my gosh, it's like the end of times if you work in commercial real estate with like office buildings. Yeah. But that's just reflects the reality of kind of this shift towards more hybrid working and stuff. So now salute, you know, there's there's stress going on in that particular sector

Nick Gomez:

in the office real estate. Right. Right. But again, so it is we have an oversupply of office space, and inflation is all about supply, right? And so what's happening to, to the, the the office real estate, it's going down in price, it's deflating, right? Housing, however, is not deflated, very much really even even the jacked up the mortgage rates, even though even though that's why, because there is still a shortage of it, even that, you know, 7% mortgage, there's still a shortage of and so this office space, I think we're going to see a lot more offices being renovated into living spaces, because that's where the shortage is. And, you know, capitalism is supposed to be good at filling need, right? of real goods.

Ryan Benincasa:

Right? Right.

Nick Gomez:

So it's going to shift around in that way. You know, it's, as long as we have a net transfer of close to $2 trillion into the into the economy that winds up in private bank accounts. And stays there. So that's all you have to look at. In actual fact, you don't really have to look at anything else. I also look at sentiment. And because I think there's two things that that drive the market. First of all, is the fund flows, no doubt about it. It's your money fund flows. And second is fear. Fear gives me the idea. Fear is the most evolved emotion humans have. Right is the most evolved, everybody has it. And to a higher degree or or not, you know, it's all about fear. Fear of loot, Fear Of Missing Out is a fear. Greed is a fear, right? It's all it's all fear based right? And so, when you when you see that, like as it is now at percent while now it's 70. But 70% of the AI, the American Association of individual investors, more than 70% 73% of them can't imagine that the stock market will be higher in six months time. Okay, that's amazing, because 73% of them are either neutral or outright bearish. So that means that 73% of them can't imagine that it's going to be higher. Only 27% Right now, it was only 21 Last week, but anyway, right now 27% believe that the market will be higher in six months time. That is not what happens at the top of a market. You You do not get out at the top of the market? That

Ryan Benincasa:

is very, very good point. You know, the sentiment has really been in the gutter for a while, I think I think the I think the Michigan consumer sentiment had an all time an all time low all time in June last year, right. When when gas prices spiked. I mean, it's like, come on, like, like, really? Like, like that was worse than then. Oh, wait.

Adam Rice:

Well, you know, it might have something to do with everyone in the media talking about how there's going to be an imminent recession for a year.

Nick Gomez:

Yeah. Yeah, that has a lot to do with it as well.

Ryan Benincasa:

Oh, sorry. Go ahead. I was gonna say, I wonder to what extent, you know, companies have, like, in the first half of the year have really sort of been conservative on on the spending side, whether it's spending on advertising, marketing, and advertising, or capital investments. And, you know, the longer that they sort of sit there waiting for, you know, the recession, quote, unquote, to hit. And, you know, if you're, if you're losing market share, you're losing a purchase, then you're gonna end up overcompensating on the other side. Right. So I do wonder, in the back of this year, in particular, I think I replied to a tweet that you guys put out today, Nick, you know, this idea that, you know, we might get somewhat of a working capital release by by the, by the government in the back half of the year, because, you know, with the debt ceiling debates and stuff, you know, maybe we stretched our payables and, and, you know, other other sorts of projects that, you know, are in need of funding, you know, we may have sort of slowed down. Exactly. And so, I wonder, you know, to what extent that is a, a, you know, a risk to the upside for the for the back half of the year, not not necessarily. I'm not like a like a markets like, prediction. Guy, I'm more so just talking about in terms of real economic activity. Yeah, you know, to what extent maybe maybe companies are going to realize that they're going to have to pick up the pace in terms of marketing, advertising, capital spending, what have you.

Nick Gomez:

Yeah, just a thought, yeah. Because there is going to there is going to be an acceleration of some spending, for sure. Because you can imagine put yourself in their, their position, as you know, the Treasury. There are there, there are things that cannot wait, you know, Social Security has to be paid now. But there are, there are other, there are some things that could be delayed, or you don't have to pay as much. By law, you don't have to pay as much. And so those things are going to go back. But the one thing that's going to happen is that they have to make whole or all that all that they took from some of the agencies, right government agencies, you know, like pension funds, and so on, that we made whole, which means they're going to issue new new treasury bills and new treasury bonds to fill that up. And people are going, Oh, my God, that's going to that's going to drain liquidity. And I went back and I looked at some charts and liquidity was maybe temporarily dropped when you came off of a debt ceiling freeze of new issuance, and then you started filling it, but that didn't last very long. Because it is treasury bills and boy ones are the highest caliber collateral. Right? They are US dollars for Pete sakes they are. Yeah. And so they're you're going to you're not going to have any trouble selling 600 billion of new issuance? None? None at all right? Take it out out of out of the liquidity, because people use that as collateral for margin. Right? You know, you're not taking you're not taking it out of commission, really,

Ryan Benincasa:

you also have the Fed, you know, has kind of morphed into somewhat of a dealer of last resort to so like this idea of like, like liquidity drying up to me, it just just seems absurd. I mean, the Fed bought junk bonds and 2020. Like, let's, let's stop kidding ourselves, you know, look like liquidity.

Nick Gomez:

They're paying interest on reserves of pizzettes. Like, they've paid 60s To date, they've paid 65 67 billion, 2 billion a week anyway. more in interest in interest on reserves, than they their balance sheet, has given them an interest payments. Okay, so that's, that's like 165 billion that has gone into the economy 65 billion of which is not even accounted for on the daily treasury.

Ryan Benincasa:

It's basically, you know, injecting equity capital into the banks. Yes, this is what I think about it.

Nick Gomez:

You got your money sitting there, and they're paying interest.

Ryan Benincasa:

Right. And so the, so the reserve balances build, and, and that has to be that has to be accounted for with with an increase to the, to the equity capital. So it's just stuffing the banks with with with, you know, fresh capital, which gives them more kind of capacity to make loans and stuff while simultaneously raising corporate earnings, which, which, which, you know, increases their, you know, capacity, the bar and willingness to borrow, so it's free money and invest,

Nick Gomez:

frankly, yes, right. The thing is that I'm not sure how long the Fed can continue doing this. And tightening at the same time, you know, selling off its balance sheet. Because that $65 billion of negative remittance, you know that the Fed remits the interest, less its own expenses, right back to the Treasury. So Right. So it normally does about 90 100 billion a year that it pays back to the Treasury. Well, now it's at a negative 65 billion. That means that it has it has paid out 100, the 100 billion that it would have received or more from the treasury, plus another 65 billion, which is accounted for as negative capital as negative capital to the Fed. Right. So I'm not sure how long how much negative capital can be built up? In?

Ryan Benincasa:

I actually don't think there's a limit?

Nick Gomez:

I don't know. I don't know. You just told that so you can have negative capital. Exactly.

Ryan Benincasa:

Well, I find what I find fascinating, too, is and again, I mean, you mentioned Guylian, avoya, earlier, and the emphasis on thinking of, you know, the government and its central bank is sort of one or what they were helpful with me with think about that, you know, the government and the central bank, as you know, it's kind of one single entity, what I have found, sort of comical is in all these weeks leading up to this debt ceiling deal. All you know, all these analysts and pundits and stuff, talking about, oh, you know, look at how much you know, just daily tracking of, of what, what you do every day, which which is, you know, the flows in and out of the Treasury general account and looking at its balance and, you know, trying to predict when that X date is going to come when when the Treasury is going to run out of money. Meanwhile, literally the the the cash in the treasury general account, which which it counts as an asset is simultaneously a liability. The Fed's balance sheet, that you can literally go onto the Feds website and, you know, look at its, you know, weekly report h four, one or whatever, at reports, it shows its assets and liabilities, the Treasury general account is a line item, it matches exactly the Treasury, the cash in the in the treasury general account. Literally, if you think about those two entities as being just, you know, like a consolidated basis, you know, you'd have I think the last time I looked, it was like$68 billion. So, you know, the Treasury would show 68 billion in cash, the Fed, which shows 68 billion, due to the Treasury, those those cancel out, there's nothing there. So, so that's why we hear this. I don't know if it's Kelton or Moser say like, the government neither has nor doesn't have money at any given time.

Nick Gomez:

In my model, in my liquidity model, the Treasury general account is, is a negative in a sense, because any money that moves in to that account is not in the economy, and there are doesn't exist. For all effect, you know, it's like taking money off of the board in Monopoly and sticking it in the bank. Well, it's not part of the game anymore. It might as well not even exist. And so that's why so when the Fed says, oh, you know, the Treasury, the Treasury account? Yeah. They're just saying that's, that's how much how much money is in the treasury account? And not in the economy yet? Because when they spend it, then it'll move into private bank accounts. You're Not You can't tell the monopoly banker as having money. Right. Right. Right. Because it, if it needs it, it just, how does it

Ryan Benincasa:

right, it just marks up it. I mean, that's why the score that the scoreboard analogy is good. It's kind of like, you know, you have we have a process, right that the, you know, Congress writes a bill into law and the President signs it, boom, it becomes law. And so they instruct the the Fed to credit the accounts, you know, same thing in a goal and in you know, any sort of ballgame, right? Like, you know, ref raises his hands in the air and the scorekeeper marks up the accounts. That's the process.

Nick Gomez:

That's right. Now, we

Ryan Benincasa:

need them from anywhere.

Nick Gomez:

We, what we do to make things really complicated is we've maintained the gold standard idea of, if you're going to make more money, you know, if you're going to print more money, or bring more money into existence, you're going to dilute because it's a ratio to the gold you have. So unless you got more gold, you know, unless you stole gold, more gold or dug some more gold up or whatever. You you deficit spending is going to dilute your dollar and that yes, and that that that's going to cause inflation on its own, because you're diluting. So they were very smart back in 1917. They said, No, no, no, no, we're not going to print new dollars, what we're going to do is we're going to borrow your dollars, and those are the ones we're going to spend, and then we'll pay those back within with interest. Well, where did you get the interest from? And in the end, what they did, it didn't work? Because of course, you had to pay those bonds back. How did you pay those bonds back? You created dollars. You printed them anyway, plus interest plus interest, which if you had just done in the first place, you wouldn't have had to pay the interest either. So so we're stuck with that. So every time there's a deficit, government deficit, we we match it with bond sales by or char Bill sales, Treasury, Treasury sales,

Ryan Benincasa:

right, just out of convention or whatever. Yeah, it's just

Nick Gomez:

a habit. And because that's, you know, it's a great business for the bank's financial. Yeah, exactly. That's the main reason it's done. Remember the UBI. Right. So that's involved up right, rich, and you've got the primary dealers who, you know, they have to make a market in these things. And they're using practically free money to do it. And then they sell it, they'll sell it off to their customers, or if the customers are not in the mood for buying the federal buy them. It'll write it'll do QE. Like there's never been Gonna be there's ever going to be the bond the Treasury market will always be there. There will always be a market.

Ryan Benincasa:

Right. Right. Exactly.

Nick Gomez:

And another thing I found is that as the debt that okay, that is really a stock the stock of treasuries that's what it really is. It's just right now, how much is in the savings account? And I have found that as, as the stock of treasuries goes up, so does the stock market. And as the stock of treasuries drop, because they do tend to fluctuate a little bit, right? So those little fluctuations where they the rate of increase drops, the stock market drops. So now, now we're going to have, we're going to come out of the debt ceiling, and we're going to have all kinds of new issuance. So my prediction is that the market is going to go nuts when this starts to happen. Either Yes, or No,

Ryan Benincasa:

no, sir. Because because of,

Nick Gomez:

you know, what's happened in the past, at least, that they it's, there's a positive correlation between the growth in the stock of treasuries and the stock market rallies.

Ryan Benincasa:

Well, that makes sense, because I, well, I guess the treasuries aren't really, treasuries aren't really based money, but they're kind of like base securities for the financial markets.

Nick Gomez:

So they're the main collateral, right? They're, they're, they're sort of the way the main way that dollars, dollars are held, you know, there are reserve drain, that's true. So you have, you have 00, yielding dollars is the reserve basically, right? And then you can reduce that 00 yielding dollars, and increase the interest payment bearing dollars, which are the which are the treasuries. And like I said before, it is a reserve drain. But it doesn't mean that you're not going to that's not going to have a positive effect on the market, because it is also

Ryan Benincasa:

collateral. I was about to say, is this a collateral effect? Or do you think it's an interesting come channel, or the collateral effect or a combination, it's

Nick Gomez:

a combination, it's a, it's a combination, because you're you're here, you have something that you can use as collateral that is actually paying you, you know, as much as 5%. And you can use that collateral, because that's just like cash to then go and go buy stock, you know, or buy, go buy something else, and you still have your money. It's still paying you 5%. And you just use that to borrow the borrow more money?

Ryan Benincasa:

Yeah, yeah. No, that that makes a lot of sense.

Nick Gomez:

That's the way that's the way I see it. And so I think we've for the for the last three months, well, since January, there's been this anxiety and fear about the debt, the debt limit, which had they had to raise the debt ceiling. I mean, we all knew that they weren't going to default. The only thing I was afraid of was the small the small chance that Biden got screwed, and he had to do spent as do spending cuts. But

Ryan Benincasa:

he actually, that's what I was worried about, too.

Nick Gomez:

Yeah, he did, but he didn't really, he didn't, you know, it stayed about about the same, which is 40% more than last year, on a net basis on a net basis.

Adam Rice:

Why was it really 40%? More? Yeah.

Nick Gomez:

Okay, so so far in this fiscal year from October 1, the net, the net transfer is about one, one point 1,000,000,001 point 1 trillion. And last year, at at this time, it was around 700 billion. Wow. So we go we go from 700 billion at this time last year, to 1.1 trillion. And if it stays at this pace, we should be at by the end of September, we should be at 1.7 maybe as much as 1.8 of the sneak in a few things. trillion. Wow. And, and

Adam Rice:

and loss and all this is at the same time inflation is falling, as That's right. I think

Nick Gomez:

that's right. Even though you're even though you're jamming in nearly to $2 trillion more, inflation is moderating. Yes,

Ryan Benincasa:

exactly. This is something that that we've been talking about lies like, if last year and I think this is true that that, you know, the the energy price spikes were definitely a headwind on consumer spending, particularly in the summer kind of travel months and stuff. That's when, you know, the prices peaked. And I remember reading anecdotally how, you know, a lot of like, resort towns and stuff were, were, you know, hurting? Because, because, yeah, travel was down and stuff. And last summer. And so if that is the case, and then with, you know, oil down almost 50% from its highs a year ago. You know, that has to be a tailwind this year. Yeah. It was headed with a year ago. So that's something I think is really worth looking out for.

Nick Gomez:

Yeah. And eventually, it's already happening. The monopolistic price increases that have been happening, they've been doing it because they can, right, because oh, you know, oh, inflation. So they they pump it up? You know, here, here in Canada, we have a big conglomerate that owns a grocery store called Loblaws, and a bunch of other groceries. So. So they they're saying, oh, you know, prices have gone up because of inflation because of inflation. Yeah. How come? How come your profits are up? 10%? Then,

Adam Rice:

right. Yeah, I like the, you know, the framing of greed, deflation, and everyone says, oh, did companies just suddenly get greedy? Which is why? I think, excuse Felician is better? Because that's what's that's what's really happening is that, that the consumers are in a mindset that prices are going up because of XYZ reasons. And companies are able to just come up with these reasons. You know, it doesn't, it doesn't even have to be a concrete reason. It can just be oh, there's inflation occurring. So we're raising prices. Right,

Ryan Benincasa:

right. I'm fulfilling. I love how, you know, some of the consumer packaged goods. behemoth, you know, reported volumes down, but you know, prices up double digits. Yeah, and this is all demand driven. I swear. Yeah.

Nick Gomez:

Anyway, that's, it's just the bottom line. Is that really nobody? And no, nobody in control, understands what you are. The US Dollar really is what money What money is. Right. And understand. And that's the scary part that Yeah, it's like, it's like they're driving an aircraft carrier. But they think they're riding a bicycle. That's, that's what it's right. This is an aircraft carrier. But yet they're behaving as if they're driving a bicycle. Right?

Adam Rice:

Hopefully, we're making some headway. We are

Nick Gomez:

but I gotta say it's slow. And there, there aren't that many of us. I mean, you guys are out there. Mosler has been very busy lately. And stuff.

Ryan Benincasa:

Did you see that he apparently was denied a meeting with Powell because of the the fear over the public reception of of, you know, Mosler the MMT. Meeting with I mean, it's just so you're kidding. It's so pathetic. Wow, wow, these institutions.

Nick Gomez:

So it's almost it's almost kind of a religious vibe to it all. Yes. Where you can't, you know, it's, it's a sin to have to question. Right? That, you know, and that shows you that at some level, you understand that it's all bullshit. Believing bullshit. But since you spent your whole life, your whole career based on this, you know, your brain cannot manufacture that reality because it's too painful.

Ryan Benincasa:

Or your paycheck depends on you. Yeah. You know, denying that that reality right.

Nick Gomez:

So, so So these guys, you know, McCarthy, Powell, Yellen. Like either they don't understand money and the monetary system. And what a US dollar is either the they really, they don't understand that they are ignorant, or they're liars.

Ryan Benincasa:

Yeah, neither of which is is not.

Nick Gomez:

Neither is comforting. Neither is comforting.

Adam Rice:

Alright, Nick, well, we've gone for an hour and 20 minutes. So we both appreciate your time. Really? Do you mind? Do you mind just telling the audience where they can find you online?

Nick Gomez:

Yeah, well, you can find me on on Seeking Alpha, away from the herd. ng traders and away from the herd is my investor, investor group. And I also have a website. Angie traders.com.

Adam Rice:

Excellent. Well, thank you again, so much for coming on. And we would love to stay in touch. I'm sure we'll be in touch. So yes, for sure. Thank you very much. Keep up the good work.

Nick Gomez:

Thanks for the great discussion. Thanks. Thanks, Nick.

Ryan Benincasa:

Take care. Bye bye.