What the Falling Dollar Means for America

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Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was queer.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's going to tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

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Today's number 20,000.

That's how many people visit the Mona Lisa every day.

Ed, true story.

My ex-boss reminds me of the Mona Lisa in that I wouldn't mind coming home and finding him hanging in my living room.

That's good.

What happens if you cut off one of Mona Lisa's ears?

She's the Mona Lisa.

All right.

Ed, how are you?

I'm doing well, Scott.

I'm exhausted.

This daily stuff is really taking it out of me.

No, it's like you got a real job.

Yeah, it's got to be tough for you.

No more like, oh, Ed, where is Ed?

Oh, he's so he went to Princeton, which means he gets to walk his dog in the bark and make like 18 grand a year.

Okay.

Yeah.

Poor you.

No more free coffee at the co-working space.

I think the tough part about hiring people right out of college is they just have absolutely no fucking clue about the real world.

But anyways, I'm happy you're happy.

What have you been up to?

I'm very happy.

You got to number two, then we, or a business podcast, and we dropped to number five.

We got to number one.

We did get to number one.

Oh, that's exciting.

Good for you.

Good for you.

So ask me what the mood is like here in Canon and my observations, Ed.

What is the mood like in Cannes right now, Scott?

Well, Ed,

seriously, I'm shocked how optimistic it is.

I'm, you know, I'm a catastrophe.

I can't stand the current administration.

I thought I'd come here and people would be freaked out and not wanting to spend money and worried about tariffs.

It feels frothier and more optimistic than I've seen it in a while.

And people want to do deals.

They want to spend money.

I've had three meetings, no joke, about people who want to figure out a way to partner with us, which is like, okay, show me the Benjamins.

So that's good.

I'm shocked by that.

The other thing I've noticed is there's definitely, I won't call it anti-American sentiment, but less optimistic or less benign American sentiment.

And that is I've been on a few panels.

and in each panel, someone has kind of come at me in sort of a funny way about being American.

Like, we gave you fucking democracy or, you know, or something.

And then the whole crowd erupts and cheers, like beat up on the American.

And I get it.

We deserve it.

And I'd have to remind everybody, okay, I live in London.

I think we've taken for granted how positive people have felt about us up until, I don't know, about 130 days ago.

Was it tangibly different from Trump's first term?

I feel like that was sort of the joke among the Europeans in the first term, too, is, oh, look at what a mess America is.

I'm not trying to downplay what's happening, but I feel like that was kind of, I would have imagined that would be the vibe at Cannes in, say,

2017.

I think that people are like, okay,

you made a mistake, but when you make a mistake twice, it's not a mistake, it's your values.

So I think people are sort of not sympathetic to, wow, this was a lot of moons lining up in a really weird direction.

This is America deciding,

okay, he's a convicted felon.

He denied the election.

He lies

consistently.

And you decided you know all that, but you decided to re-elect him.

So I don't, this isn't, I think people are freaked out.

This isn't an accident.

This is a pattern.

This represents our values.

By the way, I've had two friends text me saying that they're seeing you everywhere.

Two of my friends who are at Cannes.

What are you doing?

You're just gallivanting all over the place?

That means your friends friends hang out at bars.

That's right.

They're seeing me everywhere?

Yeah, I go.

And they keep on saying, do I go say hi to Scott Gallery?

I'm like, yes.

Yeah, I like when people say hi.

Yeah, exactly.

Up and down.

I've done, I don't know, three or four speaking gigs, a live pod.

You're definitely going to come here next year, although I can't be with you because I'll freak out on how much people like you.

I won't be able to handle it.

But people literally do come up to me.

They used to ask me where's Kara.

Now they ask me where's Ed.

That's very nice of you, but

I don't believe you.

No, I'm being very serious.

I'm 100% sincere.

You're the son everybody wants.

You're seriously,

you're the son everybody

hopes marries their daughter.

That's very kind.

I think you guys, we're going to bring it.

Claire's going to come.

You're going to come.

It's going to be great.

Claire's going to take over Cannes.

It's going to be unbelievable.

She's going to own Cannes.

She took over St.

Balt's very quickly and very easily.

Did she?

Well, it's very similar here.

It's even more expensive.

Anyways, enough of that.

Get to the headlines, Ed.

Now is the time to buy.

You have plenty of the wherewithal.

RFK Jr.

is pushing to make it harder and more expensive for pharmaceutical companies to advertise to consumers.

Since an outright ban could trigger legal challenges, the administration is weighing two alternatives, requiring more detailed side effect disclosures in ads or taking away the industry's ability to write off ad spending as a business expense on their taxes.

The strategies would likely impact the $10 billion that is spent annually on pharmaceutical advertising.

Pharmaceutical stocks, including Johnson ⁇ Johnson, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca all fell on this news.

So, Scott, this is something that RFK Jr.

has been pushing for for a long time.

He originally was pitching an outright ban on pharmaceutical ads on TV.

That was when he was running for president.

That was part of his original pitch.

So now it looks like he's slightly rolling that back.

The plan now is basically we're going to make it more difficult through these disclosures and more expensive through these tax changes for pharmaceutical companies to advertise on TV.

Any initial reactions to this news?

Well, it's a tough one because there's been a lot of innovation.

I don't know if you've heard, but there's a new pharmaceutical that treats depression in lesbians.

It's called Tricox Again.

I told that on pivot.

See, I can get away with it on Pivot because there's

Kara can respond.

If Kara laughs, it gives everyone.

No, it's worse if you direct that to the lesbian.

Well, actually, no, better yet.

The joke that's more appropriate for this podcast is it's a NED drug called mycoxiflopin.

Get it?

Mycoxaflopin.

I got it.

I got it.

If I'm not laughing in hysterics, it doesn't mean I didn't get it.

Look, I don't,

I mean, let me go to distinctive whether it's a good or a bad idea.

This will literally probably be the last nail in the broadcast industrial complex.

If you watch any ad supported television other than sports, it's basically a lesson, a manifesto on how much it sucks to get old.

And you sit there and when you get to my age, you get inundated.

You run by and you see, oh, good fellows.

I'll watch Goodfellows or Shawshank Redemption anytime I see it on.

I start watching it.

Commercial comes on and I'm like, wow, maybe I do have restless legs.

You start thinking, these commercials convince you.

All these like semi-attractive, ethnically ambiguous people that supposedly are very, very sick telling you, oh, do you have sarai?

You know, telling you what you have.

And you're like, oh my God, maybe I do have toe fungus.

Well, they play on a swing in the sunshine.

They love barbecues.

These people love barbecues.

And I'm convinced, okay, maybe it's the barbecue that's giving you dermatitis or whatever it is you have.

But I don't see how this could stand up to legal scrutiny because because if you can't restrict political speech, how can you restrict speech around pharmaceuticals?

And I imagine the pharmaceutical industry is going to make the argument that we have raised awareness.

I wouldn't know that.

So I have a story around this.

I had minor surgery about two and a half years ago and they gave me OxyContin and I was excited to try it.

I'd never tried Oxy and I thought, oh, I like drugs.

And I took it and boy, did daddy like me on Oxy.

I really felt good.

And I found out also I'm a great dancer on OxyContin.

Anyway, so I started taking this shit.

And then all of a sudden I started feeling like kind of crappy and really looking forward to the next Oxy and really kind of just bloated and sick.

And I'm like, oh my God, I'm addicted to Oxy.

I'm addicted to OxyContin.

I'm, I'm right out of that movie, dope sick.

And I called my doctor and I said, I think I'm addicted to Oxy.

You got to take me off.

And he's like, describe your symptoms.

And he goes, when's the last time you had a bowel movement?

And I'm like, seven days ago.

And he's like, dude, you're constipated.

you're not addicted to opiates

i did not know that opioid induced constipation was a thing but it is a thing and if you watch commercials or tv long enough you're going to find out that there's a treatment for it and the reason i'm telling this very inappropriate weird story that

that it's like a prophylactic there's no chance anyone's ever going to want to date me again but

is that These companies will argue that they're raising awareness about treatments of conditions that can help people's lives.

But at the same time,

should we, is the direct-to-consumer kind of branding of pharmaceuticals that's been taken out of experts or doctors' hands worth the additional cost of these branded pharmaceuticals?

Should we not be A, going to generics and B, leaning on our doctors for discerning, as opposed to an ad in the middle of a football game, what are the right treatments for this kind of stuff?

What are your thoughts?

Well, I think the legal context there that you mentioned is important, and it is why we can't just do an outright ban because America is,

there are only two developed countries in the world that allow for pharmaceuticals to be advertised on TV.

And it's New Zealand and America.

Everywhere else in Canada, in the UK, in the EU, it's not allowed.

And the reason it's permitted here and not in other countries is because, as you mentioned, free speech, because of the First Amendment.

And basically the First Amendment in America has

just a way broader protection on free speech than in other countries, which extends to commercial speech.

And this has been litigated in American courts many times.

And basically, what the court consistently finds is that commercial speech in America is just highly, highly protected.

And that's not true in other countries where the government can ban those kinds of ads on the basis of things that the government deems really important, you know, over-medication or misinformation or

price gouging or increasing healthcare costs, all the things that we care about and that we don't like.

That's something that these governments can protect against because their free speech laws are less extensive and they don't apply as stringently to commercial speech.

So that is why we can't just ban it.

And that's why it's kind of stupid that the presidential campaign, he was saying, I'm going to ban it.

And And now he's in here.

He can't ban it.

But to his credit, he can take other measures, which is he can probably fashion a legal argument as to why you need to make those disclosures that are already kind of freaky at the end of those ads and make them way more detailed and way more scary.

And I think that's probably a good idea.

But you also mentioned there, like...

the effect that this has on the traditional TV industry.

And I'm glad you mentioned that because

this is a huge business for TV.

The pharmaceutical industry spends $10 billion per year on ads, and that makes up roughly 10% of all TV advertising.

So

this is a huge deal.

So it's one, going to be a problem

for the cable and broadcast networks.

But two, it's also going to be a problem for the pharmaceutical companies because the reason they spend all this money on these TV ads is it actually is massively impactful on their top line and there was this study from out of usc areas of the country with higher pharmaceutical ad exposure experience a six percent increase in prescription drug utilization with 70 of that increase coming from new prescriptions meanwhile According to the same study, one-third of drug expenditure increases can be linked to the prevalence of pharmaceutical ads.

So the pharma companies have done the math and they've realized like these ads make us a ton of money.

We're spending a lot on restless legs and these barbecue ads on Fox, but ultimately it's a really great thing for us.

So I think the RFK's plan is clearly the economics of advertising, they make a whole lot of sense to pharmaceutical companies right now.

And his plan is I'm just going to try to make the economics make a lot less sense.

I'm pretty happy with that.

because as we discussed, I'm not very happy with the state of the healthcare industry in America right now.

So to me, that is a decent plan.

I'm wondering if you would agree.

Do you think that this will have much of an effect on the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry?

Some of the data you read has kind of swayed me towards the side of thinking this is actually a good idea.

Because if you look at the nations that don't allow it, It's no accident that of the G7 nations, it sounds like six of the seven don't allow this.

And the average cost of healthcare is $6,500 a year per capita, and it's $13,000 here.

And some of that is, despite the fact I think about 90% of the drugs prescribed are generics, they make all of their money and the 10% that are branded that they charge, overcharge for.

Fumira and Ozempic,

they charge quadruple in the U.S.

what they charge anywhere else.

And some of that is their ability to brand and create consumer pool and awareness.

And in addition to industry, Big Pharma spent about $300 million on lobbying in the U.S.

And my guess is if it's like any other lobbying effort, they're getting

billions back in unearned margin.

So just the fact that we do it and other nations with half the cost of health care don't do it lends me to believe that we probably shouldn't allow it.

This is another problem with

the externalities of free speech where we say, okay, money is political speech.

So money really is a problem, citizens united.

And that is you have the weaponization of government by the deepest pockets, by corporations essentially.

And there's regulatory capture where these companies make it such that Medicare

can't negotiate directly with the pharmaceutical companies and consumers end up spending just a shit ton, you know, double for their health care for worse outcomes.

So I like this just based on, okay, something's wrong here.

This probably is one of the many reasons why we are overspending that.

That lobbying, that additional margin, that money they're spending on ads.

is extraordinary.

But again,

as someone who's focused on media, I just think this is like, oh my God, the TV industry just can't catch a break.

And then the big winners here, I would think,

would be direct response platforms, specifically Alphabet and Meta.

I was just going to ask you that.

And the pharmaceutical companies will come up with content marketing and figure out ways to salt content that says, okay,

I have migraines.

Well,

this is a treatment for those migraines and a lot of content farms.

I don't know if that, if it includes, they can't advertise on digital platforms, but this to me seems like a gift to Alphabet and

Meta.

I was just going to point that out.

I mean, traditional ad revenue is going to decline 3% in 2025.

And so you'd think, I mean, yeah,

if Big Pharma makes up 10% of TV ad revenue and the ad revenue is already in decline, then it's just going to crush TV.

But to your point, and this is the part that I don't think people are recognizing, I don't think that means suddenly the advertising just disappears.

I think it means it's going to find itself somewhere else.

You've got digital ad sales, which are forecast to grow 8%

next year.

Maybe this just means suddenly we're going to be seeing all of these ads on Instagram now.

I mean, maybe it won't have as great of an effect because the consumer on Instagram and on YouTube is.

younger, but as we have been increasingly seeing, old people are migrating to those platforms too.

But it does seem, it almost seems scarier because I I barely watch TV, so I don't really see them.

And then when I do turn on the TV, I'm like, oh my God, these ads are crazy.

These are so strange.

Oh, they're insane.

The notion, just real quick, the notion that he's going to demand even more disclosures.

I mean, they basically say, if you begin bleeding from your eye sockets, call your doctor immediately.

And my favorite around the ED drugs is if you have an erection for longer than six hours, seek help.

And I'm like, six hours?

So if you have a hard on for five hours, you're all good.

But if it goes six, you're in trouble.

And what happens if, like, what's running through your mind at five hours and 50 minutes when you still have wood?

Like, okay, in 10 minutes, I got to go to the emergency room.

And that disclosures are so...

It's literally, they're insane.

They're like, if your heart stops,

stop taking this medication.

Or if you begin convulsing and foaming at the mouth, seek medical attention.

Yeah.

Meanwhile, the guy's smiling while he flips the burger on the grill.

Yeah.

We'll be right back after the break for a look at the IPO market.

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After three tough years for new listings, 2025 was expected to be the IPO comeback year, and momentum does now seem to be building.

In the last month, crypto firm Circle surged 168% on its debut, breaking the record for the biggest first-day jump by an IPO valued at $1 billion or more.

Shares of fintech company QIIME rose 37% in its market debut and space and defense technology company Voyager ended its first day of trading up more than 80%.

Newly public stocks are now seeing their strongest first day performances in more than three years.

Meanwhile, there are several other highly anticipated IPOs that are gearing up to go public, including Klana, Gemini, and Cerebris.

So Scott, the IPO market...

I don't think it's necessarily heating up, but I think we could maybe say it's warming up.

We've seen IPOs raise 25 billion dollars year to date that's up from 18 billion dollars in the same period last year again

not an explosion not the explosion people were predicting

but an increase but I think what is probably more significant is how well some of these IPOs have been received Circle probably being the best example up 168% on its very first day and so I think people what people are saying is there was a concern that there wasn't enough demand in the IPO market and that some of these IPOs would fall flat.

But that is not what's happening.

Of the companies that are going public, we are seeing some serious pops.

So your initial reactions to what's happening in the IPO market right now?

Essentially, an IPO is now a financing event, or it's traditionally, excuse me, been a financing event, where at some point when Alphabet or Google went public, they needed to raise a billion dollars.

And the private markets, the venture capital market, wasn't big enough.

The pools weren't that deep.

So they went public.

It was still a great company, still growing.

And since then, I think the stock is up 120-fold.

So retail investors got to participate in that.

Oftentimes now,

the IPO is kind of the last station to try and get an up round from retail investors who aren't that savvy because the private investors, if they still see juice and growth in the company, think you don't need to access the public markets.

We want to keep it for ourselves and exercise our pro-rata rights and do more and more rounds.

And management can get liquid or get liquidity by selling in secondary markets.

So a lot of the boxes that were checked by the IPO market or public markets can be checked in the private markets.

So sometimes the public markets are just sort of a last stop on the retail dumb investor train.

Like who will give us an upmark here?

Well, maybe retail investors.

When you have a company double in value,

the kind of the knee-jerk response is, well, they just incurred unnecessary dilution.

If they sell 10% of the company for $100 million, valued at a billion, and the stock doubles, you think, well, you shouldn't have taken a 10% dilution.

You should have priced it correctly, and you only would have incurred a 5% dilution.

And what a lot of these companies and their bankers are telling them to do, because their bankers want to hand out goodies to their best institutional clients who pay their fees, is the bankers will say, no, price it really aggressively such that you get a big first aid pop.

And the 5% or 3% additional dilution is worth the global branding.

You only get to go public once, or most companies only get to go public once.

And I had never heard of Circle.

And now everyone in the financial community has heard of Circle.

And for the next seven months, we're going to be talking about how the top IPO of the year in terms of first-day pop was this company called Circle.

And it also just creates momentum and positive momentum for the company.

So a lot of these companies have been convinced by their bankers to price the IPO well below the number.

Now, having said that, it's not like retail investors make money here because the first trade that the retail investor gets to trade at is post the pop, right?

It's the first trade.

It's the institutional clients of the bankers, the underwriters, taking the public that get to participate.

So it's a bit of a rigged game.

So

I got to invest in the IPO of Airbnb.

I know those guys.

I'm an informal advisor, so I got allocation in the IPO.

priced at 60 or 68.

First trade was at 160 bucks.

People were really excited about Airbnb.

It's a great company, great management.

It's now, I think, at $120 or $130.

So if you were a retail investor that bought on the opening trade at $160, you're actually down.

So unless you have access, you're an institutional investor, the IPO market hasn't been great because, one, it's a bit of a rig game for the insiders and the friends of the underwriters.

And two, a lot of the juice has already been squeezed in the private markets because VCs and late-stage private investors want to capture those gains for themselves in the private market.

I agree with all of that.

You had a great take take yesterday, and that was talk a little bit about the company or the type of companies that are going public in this market.

What I'm seeing is, yes, the IPO market is coming back, and we are seeing a lot more IPOs.

I think we've seen more IPOs so far this year than we had all of last year.

By the way, interestingly, what's happening is we're seeing more IPOs, but per IPO, the amount of money that they're actually raising is a lot less than last year.

My view is I look at all these companies that are going public.

I don't want to invest invest in any of them.

I think what is happening is that the companies that are going public are, quite frankly, mostly the unimpressive companies.

And let's just like go through the list of the companies we're talking about here.

So, Circle.

This is a crypto company.

It's specifically a stable coin company.

And basically, what that means is they issue this stable coin called the USDC coin, and it's a cryptocurrency that is pegged to the US dollar.

And the reason that you do that is to make trading and buying and selling different crypto assets easier.

So if that sounds like an oxymoron to you, it is.

I mean, the whole point of crypto was to not rely on the dollar.

But what the industry is realizing is that all these other crypto assets are so unstable and so volatile that the only way you can really transact is to create a fake US dollar to lean on

the stability and the security of the US government.

So to me, this is like the epitome of reinventing the wheel.

This is the crypto industry's solution to the volatility of the assets that they created.

They are simply going back to the US government to borrow more credibility.

So that is how Circle makes money.

Specifically, they just buy treasuries.

That's what generates 99% of the revenue.

And it's also what backs.

the USDC coin.

That's what makes it pegged to the dollar.

And they just earn money on the interest.

So in other words, the hottest new company in the IPO market is basically a shell company that holds US treasuries.

You look at some of the other companies that have gone public, this company Core Weave, which is this cloud platform.

It was another very splashy IPO.

People were pretty hyped about it.

It seemed like a great company until people started to realize that this company is almost entirely dependent on NVIDIA and the support that it gets from NVIDIA.

And I'll just quote a report from Moffitt Nathanson, which said, quote, Coreweave exists because NVIDIA wants it to exist.

And the reality is for Core Weave, is they're making revenue, but a lot of it is because they're first in line for all of NVIDIA's GPUs.

Why?

Because NVIDIA is one of their biggest investors.

NVIDIA owns 5% of the company.

So another big IPO, big splash, but without NVIDIA, the company wouldn't really function.

And then you just look at the other companies that are in the pipeline, Klana, which is a buy now, pay later company.

As we discussed, buy now, pay later is just a rebrand of credit.

They're saying, oh, we're different from credit.

No, buy now, pay later.

That's literally the definition of credit.

And what they have found is that in the past year, they're seeing a 20% rise in losses due to credit defaults because young people are increasingly using Klana and then they're just not paying the money back.

because they probably just don't have the money.

I mean, they're using BNPL to go buy the Coachella tickets.

They think that they're just going to be able to pay it over time and then they realize, oh, I don't have the money.

They just default.

So that's another problem.

Another company going public, Gemini, that's the crypto company that was founded by the Winklevoss twins.

They were sued a couple of years ago by the New York Attorney General for defrauding customers.

So I just, I look at all of these companies.

I'm like, that's a shitty company, that's a shitty company, that's shitty company.

They're all, they have a very SPAC feel to them.

And it's almost as if IPOs in 2025 are SPACs in 2021.

And it's a shame because there are a lot of companies that I would love to invest in.

But to your point, they are all still private.

I mean, I think of SpaceX and OpenAI and ByteDance, Stripe, Databricks, all the other AI companies, Anthropic, a ton of incredible, high-quality, high-value companies in there that I would love to invest in if they were to IPO.

But they're not going public because I think to your point, they already have the money in the private markets.

Going public is kind of a headache.

So why not just continue to raise the money in your venture rounds?

And then

you just keep raising to infinity.

I mean, that's why we keep seeing these series EFGH rounds.

This wasn't really possible 20 years ago.

So then the dynamic is, what are the companies that are left over?

It's these companies that probably the VCs didn't really want to invest in.

It's these companies that only need to raise a little bit of money, that have these kind of precarious business models.

And ultimately, you got the great companies that are for the wealthy investors, institutional investors, accredited investors, and then all the shitty companies are being thrown over to the retail investors, which is just not a great dynamic in my view.

Yeah, it feels as if also some of it is a bit of a Trump trade.

And that is Trump has fully embraced, not only fully embraced crypto, but is totally neutered to any regulatory efforts around it.

So a company like Circle or Gemini,

it's now clear sailing.

They don't have to worry about the DOJ coming for them or shutting them down, right?

And I do believe there's an uptick in crypto.

You know, Bitcoin's hitting

highs.

So it feels like there's a little bit of a Trumpian feel to the companies that are getting out.

And all of these companies have sort of this new age Pepsi feel to them.

You know, they're kind of newish, you know, I don't know if you call it Web3.

I don't know what you would call this financial services 2.0.

Yeah, call it Web3.

I mean, that's what they called it a couple of years ago until people called bullshit on that term.

And then AI is Web3.

Yeah.

And then then they figured out AI was actually

Web3.

Also,

your point is a really interesting one, and that is the highest quality firms are not in a hurry to go public.

I'd love to see the IPO market come back.

I think it's a shame that more people don't have more access to participate in the upside of these companies.

And you're right, the best companies are sort of on

the sidelines right now.

Does that concern you?

I mean, it concerns me.

I've talked about it before, but

I feel that there is is increasingly less opportunity for regular retail investors to engage in genuinely transformative wealth building.

Like they can get in on the crypto, but if you just do any of the analysis, most people are losing money on the crypto.

I believe the same thing is going to happen with these IPOs.

I mean, I look at the companies that are going public.

I get why they're having these pops.

They're kind of these sexy, fun companies.

But if you just look at the underlying business fundamentals, I don't think these are going to to be good long-term investments.

I mean,

Circle, Chime.

Chime is basically like

a banking app for people who make less than $100,000.

But the whole thing is basically predicated on this legal provision

that caps interchange fees for big banks.

So they need to, in short, they need to stay small.

to be a real business.

So they're not going to have genuine growth here.

And then all of the real growth is happening in Silicon Valley.

And

where's the mobility gone?

Like, how are regular people supposed to be getting rich here if you can't invest in SpaceX or Open AI?

The response from the industry would be that

a lot of people who you wouldn't expect, whether it's teachers or firemen vis-a-vis their pensions, end up investing indirectly because a lot of VCs take money from these large institutional investors.

So if you're a teacher in Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Public Teachers Fund invests in tier 1 VCs.

So they would say, and actually these people get to participate.

The problem is, or I would argue, is that the fees and the friction

basically scoop 2 and 20, and it goes to a very small number of mostly white dudes from Stanford or Harvard who are 40% of all venture capitalists and probably responsible for 70, 80% of the capital allocated.

So again, more and more wealth

via sequestering or lack of access goes to a smaller and smaller group of people.

So, I think a really robust public markets, I think the number of publicly traded companies has been cut in half in the last 20 or 30 years, either through M ⁇ A or just not that many IPOs.

And it begs the question of, well, is there too much regulation?

Do you need to make it less expensive to go public?

And I think actually there's a good argument there.

But this isn't, you need, I think you need a strong IPO market.

One of the things about the London Exchange, it's basically dying.

The LSE, something like 60 or 70% of the companies that have gone public in the last 10 years are trading below their offering price.

Nobody wants to go public on the LSE.

I mean, it's just

really robust, deep pools of capital, financial markets, and the ability for people to participate in the upside.

Like the people who bought at the IPO of Meta and Alphabet and Netflix have made a shit ton of money.

And the key is, and this is to your point, is where does someone like you buy into an IPO?

You know, if all the pop is on the first trade or all all of the juice has been squeezed in the private market, again,

those people are institutions, venture capitalists, and high net worth individuals.

So the place where the guy or gal on Main Street used to get upside appreciation and wealth, you know, basically institutions have come in and said, no, you know, the little guy's margin or upside is my opportunity.

So the question is, what do we do about it?

Is it at a certain point, is a company forced to go public?

Should there be a certain amount of low-fee investment?

I don't know how you get around.

I don't know how you solve this problem.

Or you just change the accredited investor rules.

I mean, the fact, I mean, the rules are literally right now.

And I think this is being reviewed in Congress and it will probably change.

But

the rules have been that you need to be worth have a net worth of a million dollars or you need to have made $200,000 for two consecutive years, which is crazy that we're basically just like, you're only allowed to engage in this wealth building if you're rich.

That's basically what the law says.

And there are other ways to do it where you can take a test and

go through those motions.

But the fact that that's literally the law, it's like only

rich people are smart enough to invest in open AI.

That's crazy.

It's just funny that the SEC thinks that they need to protect people from SpaceX, but they should be free to buy cum rocket.

Exactly.

It's just sort of, there's definitely some inconsistency here.

So I don't have a solution, but

I empathize with

your view.

We'll be right back after the break with a look at the dollars decline.

If you're enjoying the show so far, hit follow and leave us a review on prof G Markets.

Mike and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other.

When Alyssa got a small water bottle, Mike showed up with a four-litre jug.

When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping.

Oh, come on.

They called a truce for their holiday and used Expedia Trip Planner to collaborate on all the details of their trip.

Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool.

Whatever.

You were made to outdo your holidays.

We were made to help organize the competition.

Expedia, made to travel.

Hello, Daisy speaking.

Hello, Daisy.

This is Phoebe Judge from the IRS.

Oh, bless, that does sound serious.

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We're back with ProfG Markets.

Since President Trump took office, the dollar has dropped more than 10% against the Euro, the pound, and the Swiss franc, and it's down across every other major currency.

Tariffs, tax cuts, and mounting political pressure on the Fed are rattling global investor confidence and weighing on the world's largest reserve currency.

It recently hit a three-year low and is on pace for its worst first half of a year in decades.

Okay, before we get into this, our producer Claire spoke with our friend Robert Armstrong.

Robert is the U.S.

Financial Commentator at the Financial Times, and he laid the groundwork for us here.

So let's have a listen and then we'll get your reaction, Scott.

Okay, two facts to discuss.

First off,

the dollar has weakened against

the basket of global currencies.

That matters.

Second fact, it has happened at the same time

as the yield on U.S.

Treasury bonds has risen, which means the same thing as the price on U.S.

Treasury bonds

has gone down.

Usually those two travel together.

When the Treasury bond goes up, the yield goes up.

It offers more

reward to investors.

So people buy dollars to grab that yield.

And that drives the dollar up with the treasury yield.

But that hasn't happened.

And that is the main thing that is kind of scared.

So

that looks like even though U.S.

Treasuries are offering higher yields, people don't want to own them.

Which suggests that people are spooked about America, either because the budget is out of control or the president is unpredictable or whatever.

So the question is out there in the air.

Now, counterpoint.

Where are you going to go?

I'm just covering the basics here.

The counterpoint is where are you going to go?

There is not a good, obvious

alternative globally

to having the dollar as your reserve currency, as your main trade currency, et cetera, et cetera.

The dollar is big.

It is liquid.

You know,

it has had a bad year, but historically, it is quite safe.

So where are you going to go?

And how do you think the administration is thinking about the dollar slide?

Because Trump made a lot of noise last year insisting that the dollar remain the world's reserve currency.

He seems kind of quiet on it now, though.

So do you have any thoughts on that?

Every president likes to use the word strong about all American things.

And likewise, this president likes to say the word strong near the word dollar.

However,

he also talked a lot and his administration talked a lot early on, about

having a weaker dollar, or what amounts to the same thing, other currencies be stronger so that the trade balance will change.

As a matter of economics, my guess is that he is wrong, that the weaker dollar will solve the trade imbalance.

There are stronger forces at play.

But whether I'm right about that or not, I don't think the administration wanted to weaken the dollar by showing the world that it was an unreliable partner in various ways.

Are there any sort of flashing red lights we should look out for if things get worse?

I think the big worry here is

another step up in U.S.

Treasury yields, probably precipitated by the world really thinking that the U.S.

deficit has gotten out of control.

I don't think that's likely necessarily, but it's possible.

And it seems like the biggest major risk on the field of play right now.

And what's your outlook?

Last time you spoke with Scott Ned, you said, luckily for the U.S.,

bureaucracy moves very slowly, and this is a drip-drip process.

How are you feeling about it now?

I mean, I think the drip-drip right now is continuing.

The dollar has been strong the last couple of days, but I think there is no question.

And when I talked about the drip-drip, what I was talking about is the people who manage big global money make decisions very slowly.

These are insurance companies, these are pension funds, and so on.

There will not be a coordinated giant global flight from the dollar.

But I think there's evidence, again, at the margin that things are changing.

And in finance, the margin matters.

A lot there.

Just to reiterate the data here, Scott.

So the dollar is down 10%.

since Trump came into office on pace for its worst first half of the year in decades.

Morgan Stanley projects it it will keep falling.

Goldman says it's 15% overvalued.

Most interesting data point to me: Bank of America released a survey on Tuesday.

They found that global fund managers are more underweight the dollar today than at any point in the past 20 years.

And this all goes back to what we've been talking about around this rotation out of the U.S.

We thought that we were seeing it with the stock market, but kind of beneath the surface, what's been happening is

the dollar has been declining slowly but surely.

Your reaction, Scott?

Yeah, so, I mean, it's like any other asset.

If there's more sellers than buyers reflecting confidence or lack thereof in any asset, its price is going to go up or down.

And basically, when the dollar goes up or goes down in value, basically its decline of 10% on what is the reserve currency of the world says that people are essentially

There's more sellers of U.S.

assets converting into other currencies than there are buyers of U.S.

assets converting into dollars.

And even though treasuries are offering people more or have to offer people more of a premium because our treasuries, the full faith and credit of the United States is seen as riskier than it was before we started putting in plans for tax bills that would increase our deficit by $3.5 trillion.

So we have to offer more.

And even though that logically should bring in more money, T-bills are one asset class.

What we're seeing is that in these surveys is that at a PE of 25 or 26, the SP stocks or U.S.

companies aren't as attractive and are no longer kind of the default investment for global institutional managers.

And they're giving looks at other assets and other asset classes outside of the U.S.,

which means many of them are probably selling down U.S.

stocks or assets and then converting those dollars into Euros or yen as they or to reales as they start to look at European, Asian,

and Latin American assets.

So that's, you know, know, that it is what it is.

Now, the dollar is, granted, it's down 10%, but it's not historically weak.

I remember coming to the UK when I was running L2 once, and I think the pound was like at $1.60 or $1.70.

So, and it's gone from, when I first moved to the UK, it was $1.28.

Liz Truss showed up and it went to like $1.12.

I thought before I moved into my house, it was down 15%.

Then I think last week it peaked at $1.35 and I think it's down to $1.34.

But, I mean, what's the lesson here?

One, you could argue that, A, this connotes a weakening in confidence and capital inflows.

And we've been talking for a long time about how the rivers of capital are going to reverse flow for the first time in 17 years.

I think there's some evidence of that.

So

this is people selling U.S.

assets to buy non-U.S.

assets.

I see it as just that simple.

And then there's currency traders who hedge their exposure by buying certain currencies.

But I don't know how much that actually moves the real power here or the real catalyst for movement up or down in currencies, I would think simply put, would be how attractive those assets are in that country and have people converting into those currencies.

And so I don't, I think this is super interesting.

The fact that we have yields going up as the dollar goes down is basically something that blows my mind from macroeconomics back when I was in second year in business school.

That's not supposed to happen.

But I think what we forget is treasuries are only one asset class.

If people are selling down their Apple and they're buying,

you know, they're buying Siemens or Toyota, that's another asset class that's being traded out of dollars into Euros and yen.

Yeah.

And by the way, the other asset class that we should probably mention, which is definitely riding some tailwinds off of this, is gold, which just overtook the Euro as the second largest reserve asset in the world.

It's been a phenomenal run for gold.

Price of gold is up 30% year to date.

Prices have doubled since late 2022.

That's wild.

It is pretty insane what's happening here with gold.

And it's kind of establishing itself once again as the safe haven asset.

I've talked on this podcast.

I just don't love gold as an investment.

I kind of land in the Warren Buffett frame of things.

But there's no denying that's kind of where people are going.

They are moving out of treasuries.

They're getting out of dollars.

They're repatriating those dollars into currencies to buy their own assets or to buy up a bunch of gold.

At least that's what we're seeing from the central banks.

So

I don't know.

Any reactions to what's going on with gold here?

You thinking about gold?

You're getting into gold?

People are looking for a safe haven.

And it used to be the ultimate safe haven was treasuries.

And now people think, no, I like this safe haven more.

So people look at stocks.

They think they're overvalued.

They look at assets are overvalued despite risk in the market.

So where do I go?

I can go into Bitcoin, which has accelerated, or I can go into gold.

And if you compare gold, people have always said that a lot of people say Bitcoin maximalists will say the Bitcoin is digital gold.

Well, gold actually has some utility.

And they would argue, yeah, but the supply of gold is increasing faster than the supply of Bitcoin or what have you.

But gold still does have utility.

It has aspirational value.

At the same time, it's very difficult to transport $10 million of gold, you know, should they start rounding up

bald guys for whatever reason.

Like it's easier for us to piece out with a, you know, to shove a, you know, cold storage hardware wallet up our ass and piece out to Milan than it would be for us to,

you know, put 10 gold bars in Claire's backpack and ask her to inconspicuously and get on Alitalia.

So, but at the same time, gold has real utility.

Yeah, so I think it's interesting.

I've never, ever considered

investing in gold.

Nor have I.

I think just in terms of like what's happening with the dollar here, down 10% since it took office, I think it's important your point, which is like historically, it's not that bad.

Like, I don't think that we have a

doom loop situation on our hands at all.

But I think it's probably worth just explaining what that is and why people are so concerned about it.

I think the big concern here, if the dollar were to continue to slide, is just what it would do to our debt and our borrowing costs.

And that's kind of what Robert was hinting at there when he was talking about I'm looking at the yields on the treasury.

Because I think the thing you have to remember, foreign nations hold a huge amount of our debt.

It's around 30%.

And if you have a weak dollar and the dollar continues to fall, basically that means that all of those foreign governments are going to take a loss and an even greater loss when they convert those holdings into their own currency, when they repatriate.

So I think the concern is that foreign debt holders get spooked out by what's happening to the dollar.

They see it sinking, sinking, sinking.

They suddenly start realizing, oh my gosh, this is...

this is our loss right now because we're so deep into treasuries.

And so they start pulling out to prevent or stem any further losses.

And that would be the concern, because if we do that, then suddenly our borrowing costs go up even more.

And we've got this $29 trillion debt pile.

That's when the death spiral begins.

That's when the doom loop happens.

So I think that's why people are like,

you're seeing articles written about this.

Oh my gosh, the dollar's down.

That's...

the end game.

That's what would happen if it got really bad.

My view on this is I don't think we're anywhere near that.

And I think it's helpful to hear you say that that you went to London, you went with L2 to the UK, and it was a completely different situation.

The dollar was even weaker than it is now.

But I feel like

that's the end game that people are worried about.

It's never a bad idea to have a little bit of your assets exposed to different asset classes.

So taking a little bit of money and putting it in gold, I wouldn't do it when I was your age, but for someone like me, it probably makes sense to have a little bit of gold, a little bit of Bitcoin, a little bit of this, a little bit of that.

And I got exposure to gold because um i started an 18 karat gold butt plug business but

and i was sued by tesla it ends up they have ip protection on um expensive stuff for assholes so i was put out of business by tesla Oh, that's good.

So what I've learned from that is I don't think you were listening to anything I was saying because you were formulating your joke.

Nothing.

I was so ready to tell that joke.

I have no idea what you said.

Where are we?

I was looking at your face.

You seemed interested.

You seemed concentrated.

No, no, no.

Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.

Oh, okay.

Well, we got as much insight out of you on this episode as we were going to get.

We got a good mix of jokes and insight.

That's what we're looking for.

Let's take a look at the week ahead.

We'll see the personal consumption expenditures indexed for May, and we'll also see earnings from FedEx and Nike.

Scott, do you have any predictions for this week?

So I love Netflix, but I think Netflix stock is going to come under pressure over the next year.

It's had an incredible run.

It's an amazing company, great management.

But I was blown away by the data that you shared yesterday.

And that is that if you look at share of streaming

or video consumption, it's 13% share for YouTube, 8% for Netflix and number 2, and Disney's

number three

at 5%.

And what I found fascinating was that on a gross dollar volume level, YouTube is actually spending almost as much on content as Netflix.

It's just going out to people who are doing videos on dog grooming or, you know, Turkish cooking in their revenue program.

Like Neil Mohan, the head of YouTube, has a revenue share program.

And all of these Hollywood gaffers and union and production and reality TV producers crying into TikTok, I get it, but essentially what's happening is there's a transfer of wealth from the traditional creators to, or the old-time creators working for, you know,

Paramount and Warner Brothers and Netflix to the creator economy, these individuals.

And it just struck me that this asset-like business model is just such a superior model because it cuts out all of the means of production costs and says if you have cameras, I mean, your iPhone is probably as good as a $50,000 or $100,000 camera 20 years ago, right?

A Panavision camera.

And so, and when I think of the, just the power of YouTube and TikTok, I think YouTube and TikTok are about to do to Netflix what Netflix did to Comcast and to Fox.

And I'm just struck by this asset light model where they are able to create content that people seem increasingly interested in consuming, which says to me that ByteDance and YouTube will continue to grow their share, possibly at the expense not only of broadcasts and of cable and other streamers, but at the cost of the juggernaut in the space Netflix.

So my prediction is that we're going to start to see pressure on Netflix stock at the hands of this asset-like YouTube and TikTok model.

This episode was produced by Claire Miller and engineered by Benjamin Spencer.

Our associate producers are Alison Weiss and Dan Shallan.

Mia Severio is our research lead.

Isabella Kinsel is our research associate.

Drew Burroughs is our technical director.

And Catherine Dillon is our executive producer.

Thank you for listening to Property Markets from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Tune in tomorrow for a fresh take on the markets.

You have me

in kind

reunion

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and the girlfriends

in love.