#7 Nouriel Roubini

In this special episode of In The Harbor, Jason Johns and Scott Lindsay are joined by one of the most influential macroeconomists of our time—Dr. Nouriel Roubini. Known for his prescient views on global risks and financial crises, Dr. Roubini brings decades of policy, academic, and investment experience to the conversation.

Together, they unpack today’s complex macro environment—touching on everything from debt sustainability and geopolitical instability to the transformative impact of AI and technology. Most importantly, they connect the dots for financial advisors and investors: how do these global dynamics translate to real-world portfolio construction?

Dr. Roubini is CEO of Roubini Macro Associates, Chief Economist at Atlas Capital Team, and Co-Founder of Rosa & Roubini Associates. He has advised the White House, the U.S. Treasury, and served as a professor of economics at NYU and Yale.

This is a must-listen for anyone looking to better understand the forces shaping our economic future—and how to navigate them with clarity and confidence.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome back to In the Harbor, the podcast where sports, leisure, and finance meet. I'm your host, Jason Johns, and today I'm joined by my rotating co-host, Scott Lindsay. Scott, welcome to the pod.

SPEAKER_02 0:15

Glad to be here, Jason. Always a fun day when I get to ride co-pilot with you on In the Harbor.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

And today's episode is a special one. We're joined by a global economist who needs no introduction, but I'll introduce him anyways, Dr. Nuriel Rubini.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

Definitely a fascinating history to this man. From his early days studying economics to academia and then shaping policy with Timothy Geitner and Janet Yellen. Dr. Rubini's career has spanned academia, government, and markets.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

You may know him from his prescient call on the 2008 financial crisis, but he's also a long-term thinker with deep insight into how global megatrends are reshaping the economy.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

Today, he's the co-founder, chief economist, and portfolio manager at Atlas Capital. And his latest work is far from what you might expect.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

In fact, we'll hear his base case for the U.S. hitting 4% growth by 2030, driven by a new wave of productivity and innovation.

SPEAKER_02 1:15

We'll also break down what that means for investors and how to think about positioning portfolios in a world of shifting risks and evolving opportunities.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

It's a big picture conversation with practical takeaways. This is In the Harbor.

SPEAKER_02 1:48

Thank you for having me. Such a storied career and uh background. We thought we would jump right in. I think one of the interesting things we want to find out a little bit more about you is what was the drive that brought you and drew you into economics?

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Interesting question. Well, I I grew up in Italy, but actually I was born in Turkey, and my parents are uh Persian Jews. So went from uh Istanbul to Tehran to Tel Aviv and then by the age of five, I moved to Milano. And when I was in my teens, you know, I started becoming uh socially and politically aware. I was only a 14-year-old kid, but uh in Italy you had the social and political turmoil. Uh, there were terrorism, uh, there was violence, uh, there were uh uh how to say pushes against income and wealth inequality. And in the 70s were two major events. One was the Yom Kippur war between Israel and the Arab states that led to the old shock and the stagflation of 73-75, and then the Iranian Revolution that led to another oil shock and another bout of stagflation. So it was both local economic and social issues, and then there were the global ones, like the Yom Kippur War and the Iranian Revolution, and you know, being Jewish, being of Persian origin, knowing and understanding the Middle East, I understood that there was an axis between economic issues, social issues, and geopolitical ones. And maybe I was not smart enough to become a real hard scientist, like a physicist or something like this, and the other uh social sciences like uh sociology or political science were a bit too soft. So, economics to me was uh one way of understanding live more rigorously in this world, and also not just knowing in theory, but also to change it. I knew from early on that I wanted to become an economist. Literally, by the age of 16, I decided I'd study economics. And I wanted just not to become an academic, but I wanted at some point to be involved in policy because uh I didn't want just to stay in the ivory tower. I thought economics is a tool to change society economics and make people better off, both in your own country and then globally. So there was this uh interest also to change the world for the better, not just to be a researcher or an academic.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

And and so when we think about that, and I I think there were some Italian economists that went to Cambridge, right? So you went to a different Cambridge when you went to Harvard to study economics. Um did that, you know, following some of the Italian economists of the day, did that kind of help form your worldview?

SPEAKER_00 4:40

Well, there were two Cambridges, one Cambridge UK and a Cambridge Mass. Um in the 60s and 70s, a number of uh Italians went to Cambridge, UK, because there were these uh uh neo-Marxian uh economic uh uh taught uh schools. Uh Sraffa was a neo-Marxist economist that was uh leading in the UK and was attracting many Italians. But you know, I understood the importance of Karl Marx to understand how history and economics connect to each other, but I was not uh convinced by the uh policy implications, even if at that time I would say I was uh left of the center in terms of my own uh economic and social and political views. Uh, while Cambridge Mass between Harvard and MIT was the place where you could study more rigorous, uh I would say neoclassical uh economic theory and applied ones. And I knew I would study first as in college in Italy at Boconi University with the idea of going to get a graduate degree in the United States, so Cambridge Mass rather than Cambridge UK. Uh and that's what I got my graduate education.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

So let's let's talk a little bit about some of your early research because I think it's very uh topical even today when we think about political dynamics affecting economic outcomes.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

Yes, you know, when I did my PhD and my main advisors were uh Jeffrey Sachs and Larry Summers, um I did some work that was on global economic policy coordination, coordination of monetary and fiscal policy. But uh one of my classmates at Harvard a year ahead of me was Alberto Alizina, who had written uh a number of papers about uh the theory of uh political business cycles, both electoral one and partisan, meaning what happens before elections and what are the different economic policies of center-left and center-right uh governments. And then with my advisor, Jeffrey Sachs, I wrote a couple of empirical papers testing whether looking at advanced economies, the business cycle were more driven by elections or by partisan differences. And the answer was a bit of both. And while my main essentially uh PhD thesis was on global macroeconomic coordination and spillovers of policies across countries, there was also a chapter about uh the empirical evidence on political business cycles. And then with Alberto Alizina, that then uh became eventually professor at Harvard. A few years later, uh, a few readers later, we wrote a book around 2004 and five about political cycles and the economy, looking both at the theory and the empirical evidence about uh how much politics affects uh the economic cycle. Meaning, traditionally, whether you are center right or center left, before election, you want to try to affect fiscal and monetary policy, uh, too easy economic condition to have stronger growth to win the election. And that happens whether you are center right or center left. But then there are also differences in the macroeconomic policies between center right and center left. If you believe in a trade-off between inflation and uh growth or unemployment, center left governments historically care more about jobs and growth, and maybe at the cost of slightly higher inflation, while center-right governments tend to uh prefer to having uh uh lower inflation, even if at the cost of slightly lower economic growth. And when you look at advanced economies, the evidence between the 1960s and 2000, early 2000, when we had the data and published the book, suggests that there were both electoral cycles and partisan cycles as well. So part of my research early on was also to understand also politics and the relations between politics and economics, and between macroeconomic policies and uh politics, and in part also uh geopolitics.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

So let's connect that because you talked early on about you know not just being in the ivory tower and actually having you know a hand in policy. So you've spent time at the IMF, the World Bank, uh, you were at Treasury with Timothy Geithner, the White House with Janet Yellen. How has that kind of informed some of your uh thoughts?

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Well, as I said, from early on, I didn't want to be just an ivory tower economist. Um, I believe that economics has to be used for changing the world for the better. When I was already in grad school at Harvard, I spent summers as a summer intern uh at the IMF and later on visited uh, you know, the Fed, the World Bank, and so on. And then in 1998, I had the chance of uh serving in the Council of Economic Advisors of the White House when John McGallen was the chair. This was before she became Fed chair and then secretary of the Treasury. And then a year later, when Larry Summers, my former advisor at Harvard, became Secretary of the Treasury, I moved uh from the White House to Treasury and was formally the senior advisor to Tim Geitner, who at that time was the under-secretary for international affairs. So I knew that eventually ended up formally doing policy work. And those were interesting years, was uh uh between 1998 and uh 2000. Uh was the East Asian financial crisis, and I'd become an expert of it by writing some of the seminal papers in 1997 on why these countries like Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia went belly up suddenly, what was driving those financial and economic crises. So my expertise of crisis started with the Asian financial crisis, but then uh that crisis became uh global. By December 1998, when I joined the White House, uh you had the collapse of Russia with the default, and there were worries. Uh, we were having meetings in the basement of the White House in the situation room, literally, because we were worried about the collapse of Russia leading to dangerous things with the nuclear weapons. Uh, so that was really scary, scary times. And then from Russia spilled over to LTCM and the collapse of the biggest and most leverage hedge fund in the US. And then that became a contagion that then led the Fed to cut rates. And then the spillovers went to Brazil, Argentina, Turkey, and so on. So I wrote uh at that time chapters of the economic report of the president about uh the Asian and emerging markets and the global financial crisis, what caused it, and all the work we did about uh crisis prevention and crisis resolution. This is the time where we design, for example, tools to restructure bonded debt. Uh, before the Asian financial crisis, uh, most of the crisis of the 70s was syndicated loans to emerging markets. That was easy to restructure because you put in a room 40 banks and you tell them get a deal. But when you had thousands of bondholders and you want to restructure the debt of an emerging market like Pakistan or Argentina, or you name it, uh, how do you do that? We created uh tools that are exchange offers that allow you to essentially uh corral even thousands of different investors by doing exchange offers. So we created actually mechanisms for not just crisis prevention, but also for crisis resolution, restructuring of private and public, domestic, and foreign debts of countries that get in trouble. So it was really uh redesigned the entire architecture of uh debt crisis and debt restructuring between 1998 and 2000.

SPEAKER_02 12:45

What's really interesting is is as we fast forward now 25 years, a lot of those themes are back front and center again today between debt dysfunction and fragility. Maybe now, Jason, we can we can dovetail in a little bit about Dr. Rubini's latest work and and how we're seeing those themes roll through again.

SPEAKER_01 13:05

Yes, and and that comes to the book you wrote in 2022, Mega Threats, and and I read through it and I actually enjoyed a lot of it, you know, and even though it's talking about things we should be concerned about and things that should be top of mind. I think what a lot of listeners will find interesting is you actually quoted Yogi Berra in the book, which I thought was uh a yogiism that was great, and it was uh I I think it was it's difficult to predict the future, or it's it's it's difficult to make predictions, especially the future.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

Yes, there's a joke he said uh it's hard to forecast uh things, especially about the future. Uh, there's the other joke that God created uh economists to make uh weathermen astrologers look good when it comes to predicting the futures, because the economists have a dismal track record of predicting uh uh changes in economic activity or crisis. I seem to be an exception just because of a specialty on uh financial crisis. And after the global financial crisis, I wrote my first trade book titled Crisis uh Crisis uh Economics. Yes, you know, in the book megatreats, actually, the first two chapters are exactly about unsustainable debts. And chapter one is titled The Mother of All Debt Crisis, where I point out there has been a buildup for the last few decades of both private and public debt, domestic and foreign debt, and within the private debt, debt of households, that's of corporates, that's of traditional financial institutions like banks, and uh that also of non-bank financial institutions, what people now refer to as shadow banks. And this build-up of debt has led to a series of debt crises. Initially was more a story of many emerging market crises. And in 2005, I wrote a whole book after my experience in Washington titled Bailouts versus bail-ins, how to resolve the financial crisis on emerging markets. So all my work that's done between academic research, policy, and empirical led me to writing about financial crisis in emerging markets. Uh, but uh then those crises have now spilled over also, you know, in advanced economies. You know, when debt became unsustainable, we saw uh Greece going into a crisis and restructure is probably debt to massive pressures after the global financial crisis in Italy. More recently, the fiscal problems of France have led to uh two pressures coming from the markets. And uh and I would say the most interesting recent example, what happened in the UK, Lee's trust did not survive for more than 44 days because she did a fiscal stimulus between cutting taxes, spending more than the market did not like. The bond yield went through the roof, the currency collapsed, the pension fund, some of them had mismatches and went into a crisis, and she lost power after 44 days. So the most powerful people in the world are literally uh the bond vigilantes or the market vigilantes who can punish countries that have uh loose fiscal or monetary or other types of macro policies. You know, when I was in the Clinton White House, one of the main advisors of Clinton was uh was Jim Carville, and he said two things that were memorable. The first one is it's the economy stupid, meaning if you really screw up the economy, uh voters are gonna punish you. And one of the reasons why the Democrats lost the last election, among others, was the spurt uh of inflation that occurred after COVID. But the second thing he said was he said that if there is reincarnation, I don't want to be reborn as the Pope or the president of the United States, allegedly the two most powerful people in the world. He said, I want to be reborn as the bond market, so I can go around and intimidate anybody, meaning the bond vigilantes. And we've seen it actually uh in the last few weeks, right? You know, the uh Trump started to do policy that would be stagflationary, causing more inflation, tariff protectionism, restrictions to migration, trying to meddle with the independence of the Fed, uh trying to have unsustainable fiscal deficits, bonds went higher, stock market fell, credit spreads widened, 100 basis ones for high yield, the dollar fell, and then he had to blink. And I said in November after the election, I wrote a piece and said uh there may be policies that are good for growth and reduce inflation, there'll be policies that are gonna reduce growth and increase inflation, but it's gonna be boxed in uh by many forces starting with market discipline, the bond vigilantes. That's why I predicted this cycle of talo and taco. Uh Trump always lashes out, but when he lashes out, the market punishes him. And then when the market punishes him, Trump always chickens out, taco, and then he feels like he's a wimp and he has to lash again to pretend that he has credibility, and then you have another cycle of talo followed by market discipline and taco. And initially the markets were overreacting to him lashing out, and then when there was relief and he chickened out, there were also relief. I think people have learned that this cycle is going on over and over again. So, in the last few weeks, I think markets are reacting less to his lashing out, and therefore they are relieved less when he then chickens out, because they know this is happening. So people try to absorb those kinds of things as well. But definitely market discipline is one of the most powerful forces, even in the United States, that is the global reserve currency, because we run large fiscal and current account deficits. And if bond yields were to go much higher, then you could have a recession. Well, and I think everything is more expensive, mortgages, borrowing by the private sector, haile, high grade, auto loans, student loans, credit cards, you name it. So the bond market is the real vigilante.

SPEAKER_01 19:11

Well, and I think going back to what Carville said, it's the economy stupid, but that also translates to midterm elections. And you can be boxed in by midterm elections because of the political environment we're in.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

Yes. And that's why after April 2nd, when everybody on the cell side study with JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs said we're gonna have for sure a US and global recession. I said no. Usually I'm contrarian because I'm more pessimistic that consensus and the conventional wisdom. This time around was the opposite. Everybody said we'll have a US and global recession. But right after the election, I wrote this piece and said he has a stagflationary policies, but it's gonna be boxed in and guarded by market discipline, by Fed independence, by some good economic advisors, like uh Scott Besson and Steve Miran, of course, they are the crazies like Navarro, and four by team majority in Congress. So I already knew that he would lash out, but they will have to check it out. And I wrote extensively after April 2nd, saying in the game of chicken with the markets, with Powell and Xi Jinping, they want to blink and check it out. The first one would be Trump, because otherwise, tightening of financial condition, recession, you lose the midterm, and then all your MAGA plans and goals are uh dead on arrival. And these people, whether you like them or not, are not irrational and they're not stupid. So if they want to stay in power, they have to follow what the market discipline tells them. So I saw it coming. That's why I said we're not gonna have a US and global recession this year. So I ended up being uh out of consensus, a contrarian, but actually more optimistic than most people.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

Well, and you're used, you're used to being out of consensus, so that probably wasn't an uncomfortable feeling for you.

SPEAKER_00 20:58

Well, usually people say you're always more pessimistic than everybody. It's not true, you know. Uh when there was the Greek financial crisis, the consensus in Wall Street was there'll be Grexit. Well, I realized in the game of chicken between a Greece and the Troika, the Greek will have to blink, and therefore there will not be Grexit, and there'll be geopolitical consequences of a Greek exit from the Eurozone. When in 2015 and 16 everybody said there'll be a Chinese hard landing because their stock market crashed, I said no, China is the tool, it's not gonna have soft landing, it's not gonna have a hard landing, it's gonna be a bumpy landing. And again, this time around, I've been more optimistic than consensus. So people think of me as being always more pessimistic than consensus, but actually, you follow closely what I say on a number of occasions. I've been contrary on many ways in which the consensus actually was about doom and gloom. And I said no, there'll be constraints to those things.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

The interesting thing too is if we look back to your comments in 2006, kind of forecasting what became the global financial crisis, you know, if we look at kind of the what caused it, it with hindsight, we're like, oh, of course that was gonna happen. So it's amazing that so many people were shocked then. I mean, it's I guess it's hard to see where you're at when you're in the middle of it. But I I think it's anyone looking back on what led to 2008 is like, oh, well, all the variables are pointing to yes.

SPEAKER_00 22:25

Yes, uh, absolutely. But you know, uh, everybody's interest was essentially to continue this uh uh securitization game and then passing the hot potato down the line from the lenders to the securitizing it to the mortgage insurance to uh everybody else in that uh securitization chain, and uh and knowing that maybe you could uh privatize the gains and socialize the losses. But you know, I'd spend a decade uh studying economic and financial crisis, both uh in theory and academia, doing empirical work, and then doing the policy work when I was in the White House and Treasury. So you have to understand economics, policy, and markets, the link between the three to understand what triggers uh you know financial crisis. So was not out of nowhere, just that I'd been studying this stuff in all dimensions for over decades, and I became an expert on what drives them. So I saw it coming. Also because I didn't have conflicts of interest, you know. Policymakers talk their books, people in the financial sector talk their book and so on, and therefore, you know, for the conventional wisdom is biased for a number of reasons.

SPEAKER_02 23:40

In your opinion, which of these mega threats do you think the markets andor policymakers are most underestimating?

SPEAKER_00 23:50

Um, well, there are there are many of them, but uh many of them are sort of, of course, uh considered and to some extent priced in. Uh, you know, we have a geopolitical depression and war could happen. I think that people are now realizing it could be in a stagflationary world with higher inflation and lower uh growth, we could have debt crisis, this climate change, this pandemics, you name it. But I would say that the the one that paradoxically is still underappreciated are both the upside and the downsides uh coming from uh uh the artificial intelligence revolution. Because on one side, of course, it's gonna change the world for the better, increasing potential growth uh over time. But I don't think people are fully recognizing the potential negative of it. One, of course, is a massive increase in uh misinformation, disinformation, deep fakes, malinformation, neg information, and uh manipulation of uh of politics and election by actors, both domestic and foreign. Two, uh we'll have a massive increase in income and wealth inequality because these uh um technologies are capital-intensive, skill bias and labor savings. So if you own the machines or the capital owns the machine, you're gonna do well. If you're in the top, say 10 to 20% distribution of skills, human capital, education, probably the AI is gonna make you smarter. But everybody else, the rest of the 80%, blue collar, white collar, low, medium value added, their jobs and income are gonna be threatened by AI, machine learning, robotic, automation, and you name it. Uh, three, paradoxically, every technological revolution uh leads initially to the development of more deadly weapon system to fight more deadly wars. You know, uh, we built the tanks and the artillery that led uh to uh World War I. Uh we built uh you know the aircrafts and the more advanced artillery and uh uh aircraft carrier systems to fight World War II. And of course, before we had nuclear power, we had uh nuclear weapons, and unfortunately, to end World War II, the US used uh a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Uh so paradoxically, uh technological innovations are often initially started as military applications, and then they have their own civilian spillovers. You know, the internet started as a DARPA project, the jumbo jet started as a military cargo, and Israel being the startup nation, when you are in the army, there are all these tech applications and new developments, and then somebody finds the dual use and creates an app or a new technology that actually uh has both commercial, civilian, and military kind of uh application and so on. So AI is leading now to a complete change uh in the nature of warfare. Look at what's happening in uh Russia-Ukraine, where a$10,000 small drone can destroy a nuclear bomber or a$30 million tank. And therefore, the nature of warfare is gonna become uglier. You know, for now it's only semi-autonomous drones, but eventually like fully autonomous weapon systems, and you could even have robot soldiers fighting wars. And if you're not gonna kill people because the wars are fought by robot soldiers, does it make uh warfare more prevalent? Probably yes, because what restrains warfare is the risk that uh people are gonna die. And in democratic society, we're averse to war because we don't want to have a slaughter of our own uh uh children and brothers and sisters, and you name it. So that's another risk. And the other existential risk that some people worry that eventually with AGI and ASI, artificial superintelligence, uh the human race, Homo sapiens, is gonna become obsolete. That either we find a way of merging with the machine, or eventually the machine is gonna realize uh we're useless, uh, they don't need us, and then they may get rid of us. I think if there's a tail risk, is uh one that uh eventually either our species evolves into something else, or otherwise we could become extinct. Uh so those are some of the threats coming from AI that I think are underappreciated yet, even if AI is a positive example increased productivity and potential growth uh over time.

SPEAKER_01 28:32

So, it in that vein, I think one thing that's interesting in the book is when you talk about the mega threats, A, a lot of them are interconnected, and B, a lot of them arose uh as one-time solutions to existing threats. So it's the unintended consequences that we kind of lose sight of.

SPEAKER_00 28:54

Uh, you know, you're absolutely right. You know, we started doing unconventional monetary policy like zero negative policy rates or QE because we had uh lowflation or even deflation, and then it became a monster with lots of other side consequences, including now, eventually after COVID, uh, a burst of uh you know inflation. Uh we built up private and public debt uh allegedly to finance investment in the future, but then a lot of it went not into investment but consumption, and now you have a belt debt build-up uh that is unsustainable. And using excessively fiscal policy as a pro-cyclical kind of uh or counter-cyclical tool again leads to a build-up of debt. Uh or, you know, we have uh bailed out over and over again private actors of various sorts during crises because we were worried that liquidity is gonna cause insolvency, but then we have traded a moral hazard problem with uh privatizing the gains and socializing the losses and leading to even more build-up of private and public debt and leverage and restraking. You know, uh climate change uh on one side we don't do enough about it, on the other side, uh, I think uh many of the elements of the green transitions are problematic in many and different ways. Yes, uh sometimes uh good intention policies have uh unintended consequences that lead to other types of uh damage and risk that we don't consider. And as you pointed out, all these mega threats are related to each other. It's not just only economic or monetary or financial risk, but it's also social, political, geopolitical, environmental, health, demographic, technological. That's why when I speak about the 10 mega threats, I think of it as a matrix, 10 by 10, where each one of these threats affects the other one, and vice versa. So in this world, you cannot anymore study this thing in silos. There are hundreds of books about climate change or geopolitics or about pandemics or about financial crisis or debt or you name it, but they're disconnected. What the book tries to do in a holistic way to see the connection between all these different factors.

SPEAKER_01 31:19

And I I do want to say though, one thing that was interesting is there was a case for optimism in the book as well, and talking about high economic growth. So maybe that's a great time to transition and talk about some of your current work with Atlas.

SPEAKER_00 31:38

Yes, you know, uh, you know, atlas we recognize uh what are these mega threats, you know, whether is uh the risk of the murder of all that crisis, private or public, the risk of uh inflation and stagflation, the risk of debasement of fiat currencies, the risk of eventual dedollarization, the risk that this geopolitical depression is going to lead to more fragmentation of the world economy with cold wars getting colder and then real hot wars, like we see Russia, Ukraine, or in the Middle East, or between India and Pakistan, or the cold war between the US and China. Uh global climate change is a huge uh threat that absolutely has to be addressed. We have seen COVID-19, but this is not gonna be the last one of pandemics and not the most virulent one. Uh, we have uh not only warfare, but the nature of warfare is different, as we saw in Russia and Ukraine, and increasingly cyber warfare is gonna cause economic damage. Uh, you have a demographic boom in some parts of the world, and others there's aging and massive pressure to migrating from south to north, from poor to rich, because failed states that occur around the world lead then to mass migration. We have this backlash that is key against liberal democracy and democratic capitalism is driven, in my view, both by income and wealth inequality, but also by economic insecurity. People are worried about jobs, about their future, and whether they're gonna be, their children are gonna be as well off or better off than themselves. And then finally, as I said, AI can increase productivity growth and potential growth, but there are all these other uh negative side effects uh uh of it as well. So those are the kind of things I worry about, but I recognize in the book there are two chapters, one on AI, where I stress on how AI can increase uh productivity growth and potential growth. And there's a dystopian scenario where all these mega threats feed on each other. It's not just the end of the economy, it could be the end of the world driven by climate change, by you know, a nuclear war among great powers, and you name it. But there's also a utopian chapter where uh if you have the right uh technologies and use them right, where there's AI, fusion, and others, and you have good policies and good leadership, maybe you can get into a virtual cycle where things are improve over time. And I think it's still a difficult balance. There are 10 mega threads, and there's only one force, in my view, that is going in the positive direction. Uh, recently uh I I stressed some of the positives for the US specifically. I said in US tech trumps tariffs, because in the US I see a country that is the technological leader in all these uh 14 different industries of the future. US is uh number one, China is ahead of US only in green tech, electric vehicles, and maybe batteries, but everything else is the US. So in the US, potential growth can go in the next few years from 2% to 4%, while tariffs and migration restrictions may reduce growth only by 50 basis points. So on the positive, you have 200, on the negative, you have 50. But it's mostly a story for the US. Europe is stagnating. Many other parts of the world advanced economies are stagnating. Of course, many emerging markets are still very fragile. So I think there is a story you can tell about technology doing things better, if you use it right, but not every country is gonna innovate, and not every country is gonna be able to adapt technologies in a way that increases growth. And eventually, technologies are gonna destroy most jobs. So if your potential growth is high, it goes from two to four to six in the US, you can use universal basic income to tax essentially the winners and redistribute to those who are left behind. But if you're a poor country that is in Africa or emerging markets, unless we have international UBI and you have transfer of income across countries, unlikely to happen, and you don't adapt, you don't innovate, you could be left behind. We're speaking about billions of people that maybe in a world that becomes more fragile, that are left behind, and then there is failed states, and then you have mass migration, and there is violence, and there is terrorism, and lots of international spillovers coming from these things. So it's it's a mixed bag, the world. But definitely on the US, I see a story where over time technology is gonna definitely increase uh potential growth.

SPEAKER_01 36:21

So I think that's really fascinating to dive into because uh the very alliterative tech trumps tariffs. But calling for actual, you know, you're thinking that's additive 200 basis points to growth up to 2030 by 2030? Yeah, yeah, yes. And even the tariff headwind, which is front and center more recently, where we've had it kind of hot and then off and then hot and then off, at most maybe detracts 50 basis points.

SPEAKER_00 36:51

Yes, yes, that's why I believe most likely we avoid uh a recession. But in the short run, unless there's a trade deal with Europe, the SMCA, China, and main trading partners, there's still a risk of a recession uh this year. Short and shallow, but there is a risk of a recession. Might not be my baseline, but it is, but medium term, I think that the tailwinds coming from CapEx and AI are gonna in the US. Because I said, US is number one, China is a distant uh tool, and everybody else, uh Europe is not even four or five, it's number seven or eight. So there are some pockets of excellence around the world, but uh US globe might accelerate the Eurozone growth is potentially at 1% right now, it's gonna stagnate around 1% because you don't have the innovation risk-taking in Europe that you have in the US. So Europe and Eurozone could go through a process of economic, financial, and even political disintegration rather than integration. So the risks are not just for emerging markets or frontier economy, but some of the advanced economies, unless they do structural reform and increase their potential growth, they could stagnate. But as uh Hemingway once said, he said, how you go bankrupt, he said initially slowly and then suddenly. And I wrote a whole book about financial crisis in the emerging market, where exactly that's what happens. Initially, things are moving sideways, you're stagnating, and then there's a sudden crush.

SPEAKER_01 38:21

I I use that quote a lot. That was from The Sun Also Rises, which is one of my probably my favorite Hemingway book. Yeah, slowly at first and then suddenly.

SPEAKER_02 38:30

Yeah. Given uh that environment, you co-founded Atlas Capital to apply this macro framework to the markets. One of the concepts as as we were getting to know each other that really stood out to us was just a simple one, which is your three C's credit, commodities, and communities, and how they're the pillars of national prosperity. Maybe expand upon that a little bit more for the listeners.

SPEAKER_00 38:56

Yes. Well, we start instead initially from the three W's that are uh uh wealth, weather, and war, because you need to preserve your wealth, and in this environment it's harder to preserve your wealth. Two, weather and climate change can have massive disruptive effects, and three, wars and geopolitics can be disruptive. And then we're thinking about uh what are the assets that can essentially shelter you. But before you get to the asset allocation, I think the way to think about what we do is as follows. Suppose we're in a world in which there is a risk of inflation, stagflation, debasement of fiat currencies, debt crisis, potential de dollarization, climate change, and other things that increase inflation. Then how you protect yourself and what's the right uh defensive asset? If you think about it, we're not predicting doom and gloom. We're not saying that you'll have hyperinflation in the US or even high inflation. I don't even believe that we're gonna have. Double digit inflation like we had in the 70s, meaning more than 10%. But suppose that the average inflation rate in the US that right now is 3%, instead of being 3% is 6%. It's really a very, very mild assumption. And given that each one of these mega threads increases cost, wages, prices, and inflation, each one of them is staglation rate, thinking that the average inflation rate is going to be six rather than three in the next few years. I'm not saying tomorrow is not far-fetched at all. So really it's a very modest uh prediction, not even 10, let alone 100 or hyper, from three to six average. Ten year bonds today are four and a half percent, and they're the traditional defensive asset. But in a world where inflation is six, 10-year yields cannot be four and a half. They have to be at least 8%, 6 for expected inflation and two real, because the real rate now, long real rate is about two. Now it looks like a small change, but in 2022, when 10-year treasury went from say 1% to 3.5% as you had inflation and the Fed was tightening, SP fell that year by 15%, but the price of 10-year treasury fell by 20%, because as you know, there's an inverse relation between the yield and the price. So historically, what's the defensive asset is long duration treasury, say 60, 40 portfolio, 70, 30, even the fancy bridge water disparity. And the logic is that there is a negative correlation between the price of equities and the price of bonds. If you have economic growth and risk on, equity go higher, but bond yields are also higher, the price of bonds is lower, you make money on the equity side of your 6040, you lose money on the bond side of your portfolio. If there is risk off or a recession, equity prices are falling, but bond yields are falling and their price is going higher. So you lose money on equities, but you make money on bonds. That's the logic of the traditional asset allocation, where long duration fixed income treasury, 10 years or whatever, is the defensive asset. And by the way, there are over 20 trillion dollars in the world of dollar long duration treasuries, let alone high yield, high grade, and then EM that is in dollar. So, but what happens is that that correlation is negative, assumes that inflation is low, 2%. When inflation is high and rising, what happens? Bond yields are higher because they have to be higher for expected inflation. So higher bond yield means the price is lower, so you lose money on bonds, but higher bond yields imply like 2022 that then the discount factor for those dividends or profit is greater, and therefore you have a correction of equities. And in 2022, SP fell by 15, uh, the Nasdaq fell by more than 20, growth stocks and tax stocks fell by 30, 40, because they're long duration assets, and therefore they are more sensitive to interest rates. So instead of having a negative correlation, you had a positive correlation, and that year you lost money on treasuries and you lost money on equities. So it was a balance there. It was not just 22. It happened again when you had these shocks to bond yields in 23, 24. And look at the last six months. Last six months, uh, bond yields have gone from 3.8 to 4.5, and equities have fallen. Now they've recovered a little bit. But uh effectively, if you had a 60-40 portfolio uh from say the election until now, uh you lost money. While our portfolio has made money, has made money rather than losing money. So the main critical point is that the traditional defensive asset that is uh long duration fixed income doesn't work anymore when you have even mild inflation, literally, going from three to six, let alone much higher than that. Lose money on bonds and lose money on equity. So the whole logic of creating these uh USAF ETF, that is the Atlas ETF, is what are alternative assets that can do well when you have inflation, debasement of fiat currency, risk of dedollarization, geopolitical shock, environmental shock, and we create a portfolio of assets that actually could be too defensive in the state of the world of mild, really mild stagflation repressure. Again, it's not doom and gloom. It's a world where if inflation is a six, you're gonna make have a blood butt on equities and on bonds. That's what we've designed and has done very well, even in the last six months since the exception.

SPEAKER_01 44:47

So, your portfolio, if if we can talk about some of the asset classes, if if traditional defensive assets, so we look at long-term treasuries, for instance, are no longer working because they have a positive correlation in the inflationary environment. What are you looking at in the portfolio and how are you structuring it?

SPEAKER_00 45:04

Well, it's a combination of uh various different asset classes do well in the stale risk. First, instead of having long duration treasuries, you want to have short-term treasuries, where if bond yields are higher, the yield is higher, but the price action is smaller. Uh, because with short duration, you don't have the same price impact with rising yields than you do with long duration. Uh, two, you want to have tips. Tips are you know inflation index bonds, they're gonna do well if actual and expected inflation is going higher. Three, we want to be overweighting gold. Gold as well when there is inflation and the basement, gold as well when you have a financial crisis where your money in the bank is not safe, and maybe you want to have gold in a mattress or in a lockbox. Uh, gold as well when there is uh uh the risk of geopolitical uh tensions. One of the reasons why gold has gone up 40% last year is that after Russia Ukraine, we know that uh if there is a tension between US and its rivals, uh you're gonna seize dollar, euro, yen, pounds, Swiss francs. What is the only global liquid reserve asset? It's not a currency anymore, that cannot be seized by the West if there's a conflict with China or another rival is uh gold bullion, literally bullion, that you keep, of course, in the basement of the PBOC, not in the basement of the New York Fed. So gold is done well. We believe that in a world of climate change, uh ag commodities are gonna do well because climate change leads to lack of water, desertification, collapse of agriculture, and demand is high. This will be a world in which there are 8 billion people, eventually 10. So demand is gonna grow. Everybody has to eat. That's the basics, but supply is not gonna grow fast enough because of climate change. Is a world where uh historically real estate actually does reasonably well when there is moderate inflation, because uh rent can be adjusted and land and buildings are in the short term in fixed supply. So equities do poorly, but actually real estate with moderate inflation tends to do well. The problem is that uh if you look at even in North America, there'll be trillions of dollars of real estate that's gonna be stranded, stranded because of climate change. Either flooding, hurricanes, droughts, wildfires, and you name it. So we have a map using data at the level of individual counties, is using a sophisticated big data AI model that looks at every RIT in North America, the US and Canada, looks at each one of their properties and looks at in which zip code they are, and we are measuring using really very, very sophisticated AI and big data that we have through various sources. What's the risk of damage to real estate, commercial, residential, infrastructure coming from climate change? So we overweight the parts of the US are gonna be doing well with climate change, mostly Midwest, underweight, coastlines and the south, where those climate change is gonna be occurring. So, yes, real estate, but sustainable kind of uh real estate. So then we have an overlay of macro edges uh to deal with a variety of other tail risk, and it's a sophisticated quant model because the returns on these assets well, but depends on the state of the world. Are you with high or low growth? Are you with high or low inflation? Is growth and inflation accelerating or decelerating? So we have a four to four matrix, 16 states of the world about growth and inflation. And historically, the returns of these different asset classes are different depending on whether you are in a boom or you are in a stagflation or inflation is rising or is falling. So it's a very quantitative approach to addressing uh uh what are the states of the world, uh, what are the climate risks, what are the geopolitical risks, and therefore how you do an allocation between short-term treasuries, tips, gold, ag commodities, and sustainable real estate, and some macro hedges and overlay to deal with this variety of risks. And since inception, uh, this has done better than SP 500, has done better than 6040, has better done better than 10-year treasury, has done better pretty much than any other comparable, it's better than all wider funds of very sorts. Uh, and it's only six months since launch, but uh, we're actually proud of what has already been the results, meaning what we we said has turned out to be actually correct. And these this has had really positive middle digit returns where everything else has been into negative or close to negative.

SPEAKER_01 49:55

And and so that's interesting when we're thinking about reframing the defensive part of a portfolio. This portfolio in particular is not about predicting a single binary event, but it's about adapting to many.

SPEAKER_00 50:09

Yes. Yes. Uh the risk could be inflation, uh, debasement of fiat currency, political risk, geopolitical risk, environmental risk, uh, risk of de dollarization if the US try to get out of dollar assets as we weaponize the dollar, a combination of things that can happen that are tail risk. And uh and the correlation between many of these assets is negative. So when some do better, some can do worse, and vice versa. So it's a very diversified approach and considers both uh states of the world, considers geopolitical risk that we measure both in a quantitative and a qualitative way, considers that real estate has to be adjusted to investment in parts of North America that are resilient and sustainable. So it's a pretty complex and sophisticated, mostly quantitative approach to portfolio diversification, to uh risk diversification, and to hedge against a variety of the type of risks that we have addressed that come out of my mega threadbook. But people told me uh put your money where your mouth is, otherwise it's all theory. So I try to figure out how we can then uh address the risk in a way that protects investors from the kind of risks that are gonna be emerging and already emerging now.

SPEAKER_01 51:33

Absolutely, from uh academia to forming policy to now you know actually being responsible for a portfolio and investors' money, it's a it's a fascinating career arc, and I'm sure it's been a lot of fun for you as well.

SPEAKER_00 51:46

Definitely, definitely. That's an arc from academic economist to policymaker to advisors of uh hedge funds and other investors, but now not only talking about money, but then uh trying to manage money. And of course, is a is a challenge. It's a different one thing is to talk about money, one is managing it. But it's a fascinating kind of challenge uh to see the connection between your ideas and what a portfolio could be and should be.

SPEAKER_02 52:14

Well, that's a great segue, and a lot of our audience is made up of financial advisors, so maybe we speak directly to them for a second. What do they need to be thinking about, in your opinion, over the next six to twelve months in terms of everything that we've kind of rolled out and maybe how your portfolio at USAF might play a role?

SPEAKER_00 52:35

Well, you know, I wrote the book late 22, but everything I wrote about has become even more relevant today. And, you know, in the re-election of Donald Trump, some of his policy might increase growth, but some of them may cause higher inflation. We know it's a mixed bag, and we'll see in which direction they go. But uh literally, I would say uh the re-election of Trump, and it's not just Trump, what's happening geopolitically around the world suggests that some of the concerns in the books are as irrelevant today as they are. And I would say the following thing you know, you may not fully believe uh, you know, you always have to do a scenario analysis. You have a baseline, you have an upside scenario, downside. Now, suppose that you're not convinced that uh in the next few years inflation, US and global is gonna go from three to six percent. You don't think is your baseline. But suppose even that uh you had a probability of 20% or 30 or 40, whatever your subjective probability that this scenario is gonna materialize. If you're an advisor and you tell your investor do 60-40, and then is even is a 30% probability of what I'm saying happening, then if what happened, what we say happens and you're 60-40 or any variance of it, it's gonna be a bloodbutt. They're gonna lose on equities and they're gonna lose on uh on bonds. And on equities, actually, everybody's overinvested in tech and into Nasdaq, into Max 7, hyperscalers. But as we saw in 2022, tech stocks and growth stocks are more sensitive to changes in long rates because they're long duration assets where most of the profit dividends are far in the future. So SP went down by 15 in 22, Nasdaq went down by 30, many tech and growth stocks went down by 50, 60 percent. So even if you believe in the long-term story, and I do about technology being important, uh, you can have really massive losses. So if your traditional advice is, you know, go into uh mostly equities and maybe Nasdaq or tech stuff and Max 7, uh, and then maybe hedge yourself by having some ratio of what you do into stuff that's defensive, and here is a 10-year treasury, uh, it's very risky. Even if you don't believe fully my view, even if it's only 40% probability 30, some of your defensive component should not be long-term treasuries. Now, in our Atlas fund, there is zero long-term treasuries because we have a conviction that they're not gonna do well for lots of reasons. But even if your conviction is not as strong as ours, even if it's only 30% probability, you should put some fraction of your defensive part of your portfolio into something like Atlas. Because if you don't do it, and then what happens? You'll have the balance bear that you got in 2022, you had in the summer of 23, you had in the summer of 24, and you had that same balance bear on equity and bonds since November of uh last year. So it's really material risk, it has happened four times in the last uh literally three years. So you cannot ignore it, it's not just theory, it's happening right now. So you'll be actually, I would say, almost reckless to not warn your clients that there are this risk, and then you have to find a better hedge than the traditional long-term treasury defensive asset. It doesn't work.

SPEAKER_01 56:02

And that's the one thing an advisor can really control. You know, nobody can control returns, but you can control risk in a portfolio and where you're sourcing it from. So I think from a portfolio construction standpoint, that's important. If we put your economist hat back on, you know, I think one thing we spoke about earlier when you and I were on the phone was talking about making your base case, but there's variables that impact that base case. So it's it's being aware of those variables and trying to manage within those lines.

SPEAKER_00 56:33

Yeah, yeah. And you know, your base case for some people might still be inflation at two or three. That's your baseline. But then you have to think about the world in which inflation is gonna be five, six or more. And of course, there could be even a world where technology leads us to good deflation over the long term. But that's gonna take a long time. And what I'm saying is uh even if your baseline is still two, three percent inflation, uh, but the downside scenario is a six percent inflation, that is my baseline, uh, then whatever probability you assign to that uh tail scenario, some of your portfolio advice should be consistent with that. Because even if it's only a third probability and you do traditional 60-40, you're gonna lose money across the board, literally across the board. And everybody's all overinvested, of course, into tech because that's the future. But as I pointed out, that's the one that is most sensitive to long rates, as we saw in the last uh few years. So even if you believe in the long-term story, then bouts of shocks to long rates are things that you have to hedge yourself, and long rates is not the way to hedge yourself. You have to stay away from that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 57:45

Definitely. That I think that gives our audience a lot to think about too when they look at their own portfolios that they're they're managing for their clients.

SPEAKER_00 57:54

Yes, and that's what we're trying to do. And we have created really, I mean, some people say I can buy only tips or short-term treasury. It's not that mechanical because you have inflation, you have de-dollarization, you have climate change, the political risk, the geopolitical risk. And each one of these uh different components of the Atlas ETF is concerned about the very different types of tail risk and how they are correlated with each other. And depends, as I said, the state of the world. There are 16 states of the world, and real estate has to be resilient because climate change is gonna strand trillions of dollars real estate, and you have to have a layer of understanding and a sophisticated way uh what kind of geopolitical risk are gonna materialize and what's their market impact. So some people say, let me be overweight just in gold. You know, gold is gonna do well, but you don't want to be just in gold. You have to be having a very comprehensive, holistic approach to risk uh return portfolio diversification to create a sophisticated uh uh how to say uh defensive asset. And that's exactly what it is. It's not a replacement for your entire portfolio. You can decide how much you're comfortable with equities and growth equities and tech equities. Uh, we're not talking about that. We're asking yourself the part of your portfolio that is defensive, how you can make sure that actually doesn't do poorly when equity doesn't do poorly. And that's you have to focus on that one. And it's done in a way that is very complex and very sophisticated and quantitative, with also a variety of uh quality of assessment and uh hedges and macro overlays, and it took us years to develop, not something you just do overnight by buying gold or tips, it's much more complicated than that.

SPEAKER_02 59:41

So, when you think about the clients, what do you think? And again, going back to our audience and speaking to the advisor, what is the best way in your mind to frame the macro uncertainty without stoking fear? Like, what's the right level of realism and reassurance?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:00

Well, realism is to say the world is not gonna end, we're not gonna end up with hyperinflation, but we could be in a world in which uh highly likely inflation is not three, but it's six. As I said, I'm not talking about even ten, let alone hyperinflation. I think that if you look at the variety of things, you know, JP Morgan Goldman are talking about uh a variety of the same risk and why uh inflation could end up uh at six. We may have to uh debase fiat currency and having higher inflation to wipe out the real value of long-duration fixed income. That's what happened in 2022. So you don't have to be doom and gloom. I'm just saying realistically, a world where inflation is at six rather than three is not a world of disaster, but the world is realistic, and we were at six or nine uh already, you know, uh in 2022. And 2022 was a bloodbat for equities, the world blood blood for bond was a bloodbot for almost everything. And those kinds of things are gonna happen again. It happened in 22 and happened again the last six months, happened in episodes in the summer of 23 and 24. So it's not being doom and gloomish, it's being realistic about the fact that even a mild uh, how to say, materialization of something risk can push you in a world where bond use are much higher and you're gonna lose money on bonds and on equities, and you have to be cautious. And being cautious means to think about something else. It's as simple as that. It's not really being uh scaring anybody, it's actually being telling people mild risk have actually significant financial consequence, and mild risk means inflation at six rather than three. That's what we're saying, inflation at six.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:43

All right. Well, Dr. Rubini, I know we've taken a lot of your time, but I did want to wrap up with a little different segment in the podcast where we ask kind of a rapid fire question, and maybe uh you know, we we can get less from the doom and gloom and think about more of the uh the personal side of it. So we're not talking about mega threats, but one thing I think I'd be interested to know is you know, you you've called yourself in the past a global nomad. So, in that vein, what would be your favorite country to visit?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:16

You know, I I visited already maybe uh 100 countries out of the 20 in the world, and even a little small island somewhere can be interesting. Uh, so I'm not a snob. I'm curious. So wherever I go, I want to know the people, the culture, the food, their history, their politics. I think any society is interesting. You know, I grew up in Italy and I've been in Italy over and over again uh forever, but you know, there's still parts of Italy and small islands and beaches I've never been. And you know, some places have nature, but they don't have art and culture. Some places have art and culture, but don't have great nature, some places don't have great food. In Italy, you have art, culture, music, history, architecture, great food, style, design, great nature. You have beaches, you have mountains, you have lakes, you have hills, you have a bit of everything. So Italy is definitely still, even if I spent 20 years there, where I often vacation. I'll say this one country I went recently, it's fascinating that no one knows about. It's the country called the happiest country in the world that created the concept of a gross national happiness. Instead of maximizing GNP, they maximize GNH is Bhutan, the landlocked country uh between India, Nepal, and China. So is literally the happiness country. It's a fascinating country, Zen Buddhist uh across the border from uh Tibet in Bhutan. So if you have to go to a very exotic place where the time warp, you feel like you're back into the 16th century, uh go to Bhutan. Uh Shangri-La used to be Tibet, but then the Chinese Han colonized it and destroyed the local culture. Well, across the border there's Bhutan that is the new Shangri-La. So if you have already been to Italy, go to Bhutan.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:05

All right. Well, you know, they say uh there's no place like home. So uh of course it'd be Italy, but Bhutan I'll I'll put on the list. Yeah, should be on your back of the list.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:16

If you were to pick one trend right now that gives you the most optimism, what is it?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:25

Well, it's technology. I think that um AI and all these other technologies of the future, but it's not just AI, it's not machine learning, it's not just robotics, it's quantum, it's fusion, is defense tech, is uh biomedical research, is fintech, actech, uh, new material science, uh, you know, new cryptography. I mean, there are uh about a dozen different industries of the future, all affected by AI, gonna change the way the world works. In some ways for the better, in some ways scary. Scary because it could lead to more war, to more misinformation, uh, to more income and wealth inequality, to more even risk of uh existential threat to Homo sapiens. So we have to manage it. If we manage it right, it'll be a better world. If we don't manage it right, uh it can become a Frankenstein monster. Uh but AI is the thing that AI and broadly, all this technology of the future, that's what gives me hope that maybe we eventually end up. If we can navigate these mega threads, there are 10 of them in the short, medium term, maybe 10 to 20 years from now, there'll be a brighter future where AI is gonna make things better. But uh it's gonna be very bumpy and stormy. Be a storm before hopefully the AI calm is gonna come. It's not gonna be overnight. And the next 10, 20 years, you have to really worry more about the mega threats uh than uh than the Nirvana of a world where technology makes everybody better off.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:56

So, last one, and then we'll let you go. I know your time's very valuable, uh, but what I'd be interested in knowing is how do you reset when you're taking time away from the macro world? Is there any particular thing you like to do to take your mind off things?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:11

Well, you know, I travel all the time, and uh usually weekdays are busy with work. So I was just uh for a week in Brazil, I came back literally Monday morning. So from Monday until Friday, I was in Sao Paulo for business meetings, policy meetings, you name it. And then instead of rushing back to New York on Friday, I said I'm gonna take a flight to Rio, spend the weekend in Rio. The weather was in the 70s, nice and warm, great beaches, great food. It's a beautiful city. So, you know, I like a little bit of nature, I like art and culture. If I go to a place, I go to the museums, I see the local art. I'm a foodie and I love the food uh locally. If I go to Brazil, I want to have uh Brazilian food. Uh so you know, some combination of leisure, being in nature, great cities, art, culture, food, and you know, the interesting people that everywhere you can meet. So you know, relax for the weekend before you start again a busy weekday.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:14

Oh, that's great. That's a great answer. I appreciate that. Well, I think we definitely appreciate your time. That's uh that's all we have, and I want to make sure you can get back to doing you know the work you're doing with Atlas. And I'm sure you have a stacked day today, but definitely appreciate it, Dr. Rubini.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:33

Thanks very much for having me and giving the opportunity to speak about my views and also about uh Atlas and what we do.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:40

No, it was great. Great having you on, and uh, we look forward to continuing the partnership.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:45

Great pleasure. Thanks again.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:48

Take care. Thank you. Talk soon. Okay, bye. And that's a wrap for today's episode of In the Harbor. A big thank you to Dr. Nuriel Rubini for joining us and sharing his insights on everything from global mega threats to the surprising case for 4% growth by 2030.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:08

From policies to portfolios, this conversation really brought together the macro and the micro, reminding us that clients don't just need performance, they need perspective.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:18

Exactly. And whether you're managing risk in today's uncertain environment or positioning for the next wave of innovation, the key is staying grounded in frameworks that work in the real world.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:29

If today's episode got you thinking, check out the work of Dr. Rabini at Atlas Capital, which is built around many of the themes that we discussed today.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:37

Thanks for tuning in. Be sure to subscribe, like, share, and drop us a line if there's a topic or guest you'd like us to cover next. We'll see you next time in the harbor.