Fed Playing “Politics” Ahead of U.S. Election; There’s Blood on the Streets – Former IMF Economist
In a conversation with Daniela Cambone, David Woo, former IMF economist and Wall Street strategist, sheds light on crucial topics ranging from the Federal Reserve’s actions to the state of the U.S. economy, the impending presidential election, and China’s economic landscape. Woo notes that Wall Street’s clamor for rate cuts stems from the belief that such measures will bolster the economy and enhance the re-election prospects of the incumbent president. Despite this, Woo emphasizes the Fed’s reluctance to appear politically biased, elucidating, “the Fed doesn’t want to be seen as casting a decisive vote in the election, this is why they told you they’re going to cut three times.” He further intertwines economics, politics, and geopolitics, illustrating how a decline in oil prices could positively influence the U.S. economy, thus favoring the Biden administration in the upcoming election. Conversely, potential sanctions on Iran might elevate oil prices, posing a threat to U.S. economic growth. “Iran is now blackmailing basically Biden into basically literally flushing Israel down the toilet,” Woo comments. Additionally, Woo voices apprehensions about China’s economic challenges, attributing them to President Xi Jinping’s failure to effectively address the housing crisis. Lastly, he provides insights into his current life in Israel. For further insights, watch the video.
CHAPTERS:
00:00 The Fed’s move
5:02 Treasury yields
6:36 Iran and the U.S.
12:19 U.S. banking sector
16:08 U.S. election
21:09 Michelle Obama running
22:33 China
25:07 BRICS/US dollars
27:57 Russo-Ukrainian War
30:34 Gold
32:15 Life in Israel
TRANSCRIPT FROM VIDEO:
00:04
Hi, this is Daniela Cambone and welcome back to the Daniela Cambone show now on ITM Trading. Joined today by my guest, David Woo. He’s a former IMF economist, Wall Street strategist, and also the creator of David Woo Unbound. I’m thrilled to be reunited with him today to talk the Fed and everything else happening in the world right now. So David, good to see you. Welcome back to the show. Thank you.
00:30
I was excited to get you on because I wanted you to just tell it to me straight, your thoughts on the Federal Reserve. We saw obviously the latest FOMC, we saw Jerome Powell do a whole communications 180 really, go on 60 minutes and say, you know those rate cuts I was talking about, well maybe not so fast. Your take on the latest from the Fed. Yeah. I think first of all, I think to understand.
00:56
Jerome Powell’s mindset right now, I think we have to go back a couple of months. If you recall at the last FOMC meeting, the Fed signal that they’re going to be cutting three times in 2024. And the market of course got super excited thinking that this was the finally the dovish pivot that the market had been waiting for for some time. Now at the time, in fact, I actually put out a video that went on my YouTube channel, in which I argue that the market
01:25
completely misunderstood the Fed’s basically three cuts in 2024. In my view, those three cuts that they mentioned back in December for 2024 was nothing more than political insurance ahead of the most important and arguably the most contingent U.S. presidential election in 100 years. Now, by the way, I just want to say this. I mean, it’s not unique to 2024. The Federal Reserve, generally speaking, does not like to get…
01:54
involved in US elections. As a result, if you go back the last 60 years and look at what the Fed did, what they did not do, in the fourth year of a presidential cycle, what you find is that they actually, whether they’re hiking rates or cutting rates, they tend to do much less in the fourth year of the presidential cycle than the first, second and third year. So from that point of view, especially ahead of this election, and then given who Jerome Powell is,
02:23
And given who Philip Jefferson is, these people are unlike Yellen. They’re not brainer. These people are not, they are not like, you know, basically Democrats, you know, basically like literally like a car wearing Democrats. These are basically, you know, Republicans, basically middle of the road people. And the last thing Jerome Powell wants to do is to basically put the Federal Reserve’s credibility and independence at risk. Okay.
02:52
by basically, you know, by casting the decisive vote in this election. Now, it’s also very important to understand. You say, well, but why do they have to signal already in December? It’s very simple. Because in December, they knew the next forecasting round is in March, okay? By which time Donald Trump most likely is gonna become already the Republican Party nominee. So if they come out in March and say, oh, well, we’re gonna cut three times this year.
03:22
Trump is going to like pour his basically scorn over them, accusing them of basically rigging the election. So from that point of view, that’s why they chose December. This way, if they do cut sometime this year, they can tell you, oh wow, by the way, we told you already back in December, 2023. Okay, there was forewarning a long time ago. So I think from that point of view, this is why the market was wrong.
03:46
in thinking that the Fed, oh, they were going dovish, the inflation was going down, that’s why they’re getting ready to cut rates big time, the stock market took off. All that is complete misunderstanding about the Federal Reserve. This is why immediately after I put out my YouTube video, immediately after the Fed, the Fed had started to basically walk back what they said in December about basically, so I think from that point of view, the bond market doesn’t understand. In 2024, the politics of monetary policy.
04:15
is as important as the economics of monetary policy. And in fact, I would argue, now that the Fed has said that they’re gonna do three times, guess what? The economy will have to literally be collapsing for them to justify doing more. In some sense, they’re the boxed in. So from that point of view, I would say the so-called Fed put is worth much less in 2024 than in a normal year. Again, the economy will have to do much worse than the Fed is currently expecting for them to justify doing more than three.
04:45
Now, of course, the fact that the economy is doing well, that means that they probably don’t even have to cut. So I would say from that point of view, right now the market’s pricing in 4.6 cuts for the course of 2024. Personally, I think it’s probably gonna be between three or four cuts. And so from that point of view, the bond yields have more room to basically back up. I mean, David, Wall Street obviously wants the rate cuts. They’re almost begging for the rate cuts here. Yeah, I think the way Wall Street thinks about…
05:14
2024, it’s very simple. Wall Street says, well, we’ve got a sitting president whose current approval rating is about 38%. And in the last 80 years, no US president got reelected with an approval rating below 40%. Therefore, the market is assuming that this president is gonna do everything possible, okay, in terms of getting the economy right in order to have a fighting chance, okay, in November.
05:42
And this is the way the market understands, okay, fine. So the president has to get the economy right. How is he gonna get the economy right? Because on the fiscal side, he’s got absolutely no options whatsoever, okay? Given that Mike Johnson is proving to be a great, basically a gatekeeper for basically the fiscal sanity of the country. So on the fiscal side, Biden’s got nothing. Therefore, the market’s thinking, well, the only way out for Biden to get reelected
06:10
is if the Fed actually starts cutting rates aggressively, okay, and then you end up getting with a soft landing and then so on and so forth. And I’m just telling you right now, is that I think the market really misunderstands the Fed because I don’t think the Fed is going to actually, basically the Fed does not see his job as basically giving Biden a leg up on basically Trump. And I think, however, there is one thing though, I have to say this, you can say,
06:40
But something surely, there must be something out there that could convince the Fed to cut interest rates more aggressively. Now, of course, I can tell you what the answer is because Biden knows it, Yellen knows it, all the basically the administration officials know it. The only thing that could give the Fed a perfect skews to cut interest rates aggressively is if oil price really come down hard, right? Because you know,
07:06
This is the reason why, because if oil price really comes down, it’s going to help bring down inflation that will give the Fed a perfect excuse to cut interest rates. Low oil price also is going to be a big boost to the purchasing power of US households and so on and so forth. It’s also going to basically take away a very strong argument in favor of the Trump, basically, campaign, which is, oh, well, the last time we saw $2.50 a gallon was basically under Trump. And then if we see, basically, oil price down to, let’s say, $60 a barrel.
07:34
we could easily see gasoline price of $2.50. And this is what we need to understand, your viewers need to understand. In the last six months, the entire administration under basically Biden has been doing everything to bring down oil price. That’s the reason why back in October, Biden announced that he will be easing sanctions on Venezuela, a dictatorship, in order to get Venezuela to pump an extra 200,000 barrels per day.
08:05
This is also the reason why in 2023 Biden did not lift a single finger to basically enforce the existing oil sanctions on Iran. This is the reason why Iranian oil exports went from just 200,000 barrels per day at the start of 2023 to now 1.2 million barrels per day. Okay? This is the reason why oil price is down. Okay? And this is actually getting very interesting. And then, you know.
08:34
So what I’m telling you, the entire administration, this is the reason why the market right now, think markets position exactly according to what the market thinks Biden wants and needs to win the election, which is the market is short oil, market is long stocks because believes in, basically soft landing, and the market is basically still along the Fed, thinking the Fed is gonna basically cut five times this year. And I’m telling you right now, the one big problem in this entire basically, investment thesis,
09:04
is that guess what? Iran knows that too. Iran knows that Biden needs low oil price. This is the reason why Iran’s convinced that Biden will do everything to avoid a regional war. And this is the reason why Iran believes it can keep basically hitting the US with impunity in order to force the US to exit from the Middle East. And this is why it’s so important that after the attack.
09:30
on basically US attack on basically Iranian back groups, you know, in Syria and Iraq on Friday and Saturday, that on Tuesday, Iranians struck back at the biggest US base in Syria, killing six ally, basically soldiers, Kurdish soldiers. That did not get picked up on Wall Street because people don’t wanna know. But let me tell you that, that is a huge problem for basically Biden right now. Because this is where it comes down to, because if, if…
09:59
Biden decides to finally, like, you know what? We’re now gonna have no choice but to start enforcing the sanctions on Iran, for example, oil sanctions. Then the oil price is gonna go up to $100 a barrel, easily. If Iranian oil production just disappears, okay? If we go back to where it was under Trump, okay? Then oil price is gonna go up, the economy is gonna slow, the Fed won’t be able to cut rates, and Biden is gonna lose the election. And then Wall Street is gonna have a disastrous year in 2024. And that’s what this is about.
10:28
that Iran is now blackmailing basically Biden, okay? You know, into basically literally flushing Israel down the toilet. And then fortunately I live in Israel and I can see this and I can tell you that, you know, we just hope that this won’t happen, but be that as it may, but that is what’s going on right now. And that’s where economics, politics and geopolitics all come together. David, before we pivot from the Fed.
10:54
One more point I wanted to bring up was that their change of language, I mean, they removed sound and resilient when talking on referencing the banking sector. Did that raise any eyebrows for you? No, listen, I mean, I think the whole banking system, I think the market has been overreacting to the whole situation. The fact is this. Now, we can talk about New York, basically the NYCB last week. I think that’s clearly an isolated case.
11:23
The most important thing is that if you look at the couple, you know, ETFs that are linked to commercial real estate, okay, they actually have gone up this year so far, by the way, and then the reason is because, you know, a lot of companies are now calling back their workers saying that you guys have to come back to work in the office, okay? So office occupancy rate is going up. I’m not that worried. In fact, actually, I would say that this is weird. There’s a difference between regional banks
11:52
versus the big money center banks. Regional banks, sure, because they’re paying high deposit rates. So as a result, they want low interest rates. So if the Fed starts cutting interest rates, that’s good for the regional banks. But the opposite is true for the likes of JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, even Bank of America. Those banks continue to pay almost nothing on their saving deposit, on their checking deposit, which means the longer, basically, the Fed funds rates stay up here.
12:22
these banks are just cleaning it up, right? This is why if you look at JP Morgan’s interest margins, currently it’s basically at the highest level in 10 years. Okay, so from that point of view, the Fed cutting interest rates is good for the regional banks, not great for the money center banks. This is why it was interesting last week after the Fed supposedly disappointed the market, telling you that they’re not gonna, most likely not gonna cut in March, regional banks got hammered, but money center banks actually outperformed.
12:51
So you think overall it will be, you know, we might see like Jerome Powell also hinted at some more flushing of some regional banks. I mean, obviously community was a small bank in terms of market cap and whatnot. You wouldn’t be surprised by you saying that doesn’t affect the health of the sector. Like the ghosts of the banking crisis last year won’t come back to haunt us? No, because last year, you know, again, there are a lot of idiots and credit stories here, but last year was mainly about the fact that all these banks were sitting a lot of ****
13:21
U.S. government bonds, right? And so when interest rates started to go through the roof and bond prices were going down, all of a sudden these things became insolvent. That was the case with Silicon Valley Bank. It was not like they make loans that went sour, that they were sitting on some non-performing assets that went sour, it was not that. You know, that was the great irony. Silicon Valley Bank went down because they were supposedly sitting on the safest assets in the world, U.S. government bonds. What was the last time?
13:51
In any country, a bank went belly up because for holding the safest assets in the world. And by the way, the Fed knew that they were sitting on a lot of US government bonds. The supervisor didn’t have any problem with that. The US government actually encouraged that because think about this, Biden was issuing so many bonds. This government is basically spending money like there’s no tomorrow. They need all these basically people to come and buy US government bonds. You think they told basically Silicon Valley bank.
14:18
Maybe you don’t want to buy so many U.S. government bonds. So from that point of view, the whole thing was a joke. But that is no longer, that is not a problem. So I don’t think this is going to be, I think, you know, I think because a lot of banks have already dramatically reduced their duration exposure. They’ve had plenty of time in the last 12 months to do so. I know the last time I spoke with you, I mean, you were right on the money and I know you’ve referred to here as well that the biggest tailwind in 2024.
14:48
will be the US election. I mean, we spoke before all the geopolitical tensions broke out, the wars broke out. What’s the biggest tailwind for you now? Does it remain the election? Is it the wars? Is it talk of World War III? What’s the tailwind? Or Black Swan? It doesn’t mean the US election. It’s a poll about the US election. And it’s not so much about, oh, who’s gonna win? Because honestly, the market can’t even really start thinking about who’s gonna win until we get to, let’s say, three weeks before the election, right?
15:18
because it’s gonna be close. I mean, I think, you know, at least I think it’s gonna be close. So I think from that point of view, it’s not about who’s gonna win the election, but rather what people are prepared to do or not to do for their people, candidates to win. I think that is the issue. Now, I just told you that for Biden and his people and the Democrats, right now, their first priority, okay, is to get the economy right.
15:48
to get the economy right, they need low oil price. This is the reason why they’ve been so tentative in their response to basically, essentially provocation from Iran. This is the reason why it took Biden a whole week before he struck back at Iran after four free US servicemen were killed. I mean, it’s pretty amazing because we all know, like before the US attack, Iranians were pulling back.
16:15
there are senior officers from the Revolutionary Guards back to Iran. In other words, they had forewarnings from the Biden administration, because Biden didn’t want to kill any senior Iranian officials that would make Iran look bad. Can you imagine that? So as a result, so everything, so what I’m saying is that right now the administration’s focused on winning the election via the economy. Now if that doesn’t work, if Iran basically creates more headache for them,
16:44
then I think that’s when the election gets a bit ugly. Okay. I would say the way I think about this is that if Trump continues to run like way ahead of basically Biden, that will be a good thing for the market. I mean, to the extent that they’re less likely to do some really nasty things like, you know, assassination and all that kind of stuff. Basically, if Trump has a big lead, it’s when the lead gets very narrow. Okay. Whatever it is. Okay. If somehow Biden,
17:14
edges closer to basically Trump and Nepal, and then gets narrowed, that’s when a lot of, that’s when I think the market is going to get nervous about potential, you know, sort of politically destabilizing development as people try to narrow the gap even more. I know. I know the last time you mentioned assassination as well, I was like, well, let’s hope that … I’m not the only person talking about it now. So I know, I feel very free. Everybody’s talking about this now as a possibility, right?
17:40
I’m not saying this just to scare anybody. I’m just saying that this is a tail risk. You asked me a tail risk. I think there’s a 10% chance something like this happens. By the way, I think Trump probably also thinks that. This is the reason why he has not nominated a VP. Just think about this. Imagine the following. Trump knows the following. Let’s just imagine, again, we’re talking about a very hypothetical situation. Imagine that tomorrow.
18:09
Okay, you wake up in the morning, breaking news, Trump has been shot, okay? And the second part of the news is that, is he was shot by a lone gunman who basically took his life on the spot, okay? So no way to implicate anybody else in the whole entire thing. At that point, you ask yourself, is Trump dead at that point? Or he’s been basically taken to a hospital and he might recover. Imagine this, if Trump is dead, actually, for whatever, okay?
18:39
You could argue that if he had a VP candidate, let’s just say it’s Tim Scott. Tim Scott would immediately come out and say, don’t worry, like, you know, now we’ve gotta be even more basically turn out to basically vote for me, okay? And then so that we can make sure that Trump, you know, whatever, in his membrane, so on and so forth. That’s actually, you know what I mean? I could imagine the market will go down initially, it might even come back on some kind of, the issue is gonna come if Trump.
19:08
somehow goes to take him to a hospital. He might actually recover. But I actually think the point here is that, the fact is that this is the reason why he has not announced a VP, actually. Because in some sense, not having a VP will basically make the whole situation of trying to whatever, do something bad to him, much worse for the country. And he might be thinking that that might actually hold back the other side.
19:38
I know you’re always thinking of the what ifs, what ifs, what is. I mean, you were one of the first to bring up Michelle Obama might run a long time ago. And now a lot of people are talking about it. Listen, I think Michelle Obama, the question is does she want it? I mean, listen, I mean, she would only run if she thinks that she will for sure win. She’s not going to give up her very nice life to jump into this, into loose by the way.
20:04
And this is a very big difference. I mean, Gavin Newsom will probably run even if he thinks he’ll lose, like when he has a 50-50 chance. Michelle Obama does not strike me as someone who’s gonna come, who will want to basically do this if she thinks it’s 50-50. Okay? And this is where it gets interesting, by the way. The question then is, can Michelle Obama, or Gavin Newsom for that matter, win in Pennsylvania, in basically Arizona, or Michigan for that matter?
20:32
Because these are the states that are going to basically decide this election. Who cares about California? Who cares about New York? We all know that. It’s going to come down to Michigan. Who can win Michigan? I’m not sure that Michelle Obama has a better chance winning in Michigan than actually Joe Biden. That’s the great irony of this. And then unless Michelle Obama can for sure win Michigan, I’m not even sure the Democrats are going to say, well, Michelle, please come and run. Okay?
21:02
So let’s get back to economy a second here, David. I wanted to ask you about, get your thoughts on China’s economy. Is the housing market at risk of a debt deflation spiral there? Listen, I think watching China over the past few months is depressing because you realize that Xi Jinping is not really up to the task. I mean, I recently put out a video basically saying that actually I did a whole ranking of the world leaders.
21:31
of the G20 countries, and at the bottom of the pile was Biden and Xi Jinping. I mean, in my view, there’s no doubt in my mind, of the major leaders in the world today, the worst are basically Biden and Xi Jinping, for very different reasons. But Xi Jinping’s basically penchant for stability is killing the Chinese economy. I mean, let’s put it this way. To me, the biggest problem that the Chinese economy faces, which is also the easiest problem to solve, basically are these…
22:01
20 million unfinished units of apartments that are sitting right there right now, not getting done. The reason why this is a big problem is that anybody who bought one of these apartments is absolutely convinced he’s never gonna ever gonna basically recover his down payment. So therefore he’s like sulking and not spending anything. The developers right now is basically, most developer cannot get any additional funding, okay? Especially from the banks. As a result,
22:31
Like they can’t even finish basically these buildings that they started and get paid the remainder of what owes, what’s owed to them. Not let alone basically getting money to basically start new basically apartments. At the same time, the banks, the banks are absolutely convinced that all the money that they’ve ever lent to developers have now just gone down the toilet. So they’re absolutely scared that they might lose their job. This is the reason why these 20 million units of unfinished apartments in China.
22:59
are like this rock stuck in China’s throat. They need to cough it up or swallow it, and right now they’re doing niger. And that is the biggest problem. Now, I’m still hoping that eventually they’re gonna have to wake up to this realization that this is the only way out. The only way out is to sit on the banks and threaten to shoot all the bankers unless they step up lending to basically developers, even if they’re never gonna get this money back. Would they do that?
23:28
That’s when the Chinese market has bought them. But until then, everything they’re doing right now is basically bullshit.
23:36
One more point, I want to get your thoughts on, you know, since we spoke, the BRICS nations, Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa, and all their friends now are growing in strength, growing in number. Is the dollar at risk here? No, not at all. I mean, I think the dollar, in fact, I’ve been bullish the dollar for the last couple of weeks. I mean, I went and loaned the dollar actually two weeks ago and made it.
24:05
very nice pretty penny for my clients. And the reason is because, again, it’s easy to sit here and talk about, oh, wow, US hegemony is under attack. This is about unipolar world is seriously challenging the unipolar world, and so on and so forth. But the reality is this. The fact is right now, the Chinese economy is in a very bad shape. So the RMB is going nowhere. In fact, the only reason why the RMB is not much weaker.
24:35
is only because the government in China is putting a cap on it. They’re actually, you know, this is the reason why they haven’t cut interest rates in China, which they ought to. But they haven’t cut interest rates because they’re afraid that the RMB is going to fall through the floor. In India, it is very clear that Modi is facing reelection, okay? The last thing he wants is a stronger basically rupee. I mean, this is why the irony is that India has one of the fastest growing economies in the world. This year it’s going to grow about 6.5%.
25:05
And guess what? It’s got one of the weakest currencies in the world. Because every time the rupee goes up, you know, the basic central bank of India just comes in and basically, and put it back to where it was, where it was. Brazil, the Brazilian basically, the Brazilian economy is slowing this year. For sure, last year there was massive basically physical expansion, in Lula’s basically first year. But that has run its course. Now, the economy is slowing.
25:30
And the central bank’s now cutting interest rates aggressively. They just cut 50 basis point last week. They’re going to keep cutting 50 basis point per clip. So from that point of view, carry is going to make the real much less attractive. So real has no place to go. OK. The South African rate, I mean rent, forget it. I mean, that’s not going to be in position to challenge the US dollar anytime soon. And the ruble is the only currency that has been strong. But even lately, the ruble has actually been a bit weaker than I would have thought. But that’s a different story. We can talk about that. That’s a different story.
25:59
have kind of tail risk in 2024. But the point here is that right now there’s nobody. I mean, none of these emerging market economies, big ones, small ones are in the position to really challenge the US dollar hegemony anytime soon. At least not in 2024. Unless something bad happens to Trump. Then the dollar is going to collapse. Just quick thoughts. I know we’re speaking ahead of the release of the much anticipated Tucker Carlson interview with Vladimir Putin. Any thoughts there?
26:27
Listen, I think, I personally think, and I’ve said this from the very beginning, and this is why I’m a supporter of Trump basically in this election. As I was last election, Trump is absolutely right that this war should never happen. And the only reason why it happened was because Biden and his people insisted on NATO membership for Ukraine, which had no business basically doing.
26:56
So from that point of view, they left Russia with no choice but to basically invade, because Russia could not possibly accept, no country could possibly accept the possibility that basically NATO missile launchers will be deployed directly on their border. And this is why this war is completely unnecessary. Even Obama said this back in 2012, that Ukraine is now strategic for the United States.
27:22
And so from that point of view, until this very day, I have no idea why Biden decided to go down this path with his neocon basic advisors that have come back with vengeance since they went away after the Iraq war. But the point here is this. I think Trump is absolutely right when he said that he can end this war in 24 hours, because there is no doubt. I mean, Ukraine is fighting in this war only because of continued US support.
27:52
Trump has a lot of leverage over Ukraine and Russia. What Trump can easily do is to come in and say, you know what guys, okay, now you sit down and talk. Now this does not mean that Trump is gonna give Russia an easy victory, I don’t think that, okay. I think that Trump is gonna, for example, make sure that Russia agrees to extending security guarantee to Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine not joining NATO. And then Russia will probably have to basically give up some of their…
28:21
newly gained territories in order to keep Crimea in Donbas. And most importantly, Trump is probably gonna make sure that Russia chips in basically towards the very expensive reconstruction of Ukraine, which would cost trillions of dollars. And Trump probably will use gradual easing of sanctions on Russia as a way to basically hold Russia’s feet to the fire to make sure they meet their end of the bargain. But if we’re talking about the end of the war, we’re talking about easing sanctions.
28:50
That actually is very positive for the global economy because this will drive down commodity prices in 2025. That will give the Fed a great reason to cut interest rates. It will be great for the American middle class. No question on that. Let me ask you, let’s wrap with this. Just thoughts on gold and its performance amidst all this. I think gold so far this year hasn’t done very much. I mean, I think, you know, gold has been essentially, it’s actually very interesting. Last year, gold massively outperformed tips.
29:18
Inflation index bonds as you know, I mean you’ve been doing this for a long time You know gold tends to basically track US real yields Okay, like, you know literally like, you know, but last year that relationship broke down even though real yields went up Gold instead of going down actually went up and in my view last year This had everything to do with the fact that Chinese were getting out of US dollar US Treasuries and buying lots of gold But what is most interesting to me is that I suspect
29:46
that the relationship between gold and real yields have gone back to where it used to be, which would suggest that perhaps with gold above $2,000 an ounce, the Chinese are much less interested, buy a lot of gold. So I think from that point of view right now, like I think gold is just, it’s okay. But again, gold for me, it’s a US 2024 election hedge. Again, anything happens to Trump, I think gold is gonna go through the roof. Central banks buying at record amounts though.
30:15
If you look at the price action, it’s very consistent with the idea that this is not to say that gold is bad. And then in fact, I would argue that gold and the Swiss franc are probably two best hedges against anything going wrong in this election with blood on the street. I mean, last time, January 6, there was blood on the street. The market didn’t react. OK. This time, I think it’s going to be very different. Just last thoughts before I let you go. I mean…
30:40
How can I not ask you? You’re in Israel, you said, obviously, in the war zone of the world. I mean, how is life for you on a daily basis? I mean, talk about being boots on the ground. It’s very scary, I think. I have to say it’s very scary. And because, you know, I mean, every few days, even now, every few days, I mean, Israel has neutralized 95% of the Hamas, basically rocket launchers. But every few days, we’re still having to rush into our shelter.
31:10
I can tell you, like, my bomb shelter and my dogs are completely, like, they have been completely screwed up as a result of the war because, you know, the explosions are very, very loud. Even though Israel’s basically anti-… you know, basically, the missile system takes down 99% of these incoming rockets, but they still… the explosions are very loud. And then the whole entire country is very depressed. Depressed because it’s incredible to what extent the world… OK?
31:38
does not understand what is really going on here. And that the global media, okay, the propaganda machine, okay, that is very much left leaning, has a totally distorted picture about this war, what it means, and so on and so forth. So I think from that point of view, I think it’s really just, there’s a lot of sadness and depression here because Israel feels like it’s end of the story, is not being heard, and is being completely misunderstood. And basically, I’m a liar.
32:07
David, we are obviously wishing you well and praying that you stay safe through all this. Thank you for taking the time to join me today. Thank you. I appreciate it. You’re most welcome. Thank you. Bye. We’ll see you soon, David Woo, and we will see all you soon. Stay tuned to the Daniela Cambone show and sign up at danielacambone.com and of course subscribe to our channel so you can stay updated on all this and more. We’ll see you soon.
SOURCES:
https://www.davidwoounbound.com/about
https://twitter.com/Davidwoounbound?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImrKxlLJCEY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-UpNUmxKSc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVOfzQRnDuc
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/18/biden-venezuela-oil-sanctions-nicolas-maduro-00121779
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHaE9Xhgu_0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVupd4u_xq0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNsucvsC-IU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQvpA–9XBU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zyxUHqQPdk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UraMIKY2CkI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DderdnKnjTE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgWJuDqQpRo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Jjq1O_2_pc
