Dollar’s Safe Haven Status Craters (Uncut) 04-12-2025

Dollar’s Safe Haven Status Craters – Gold Surges as China Plans Big Move

In my recent interviews with Tim Wood and David Stockman, both warned that we’re nearing a major reset. Something much bigger than a simple correction. And if you’ve been watching the markets this week especially, the volatility, the headlines, the chaos, you’ve seen and you’ve felt it.

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So call us or click on the link below or just scan the QR code to schedule that call today. For Trump to have and knows he’s going to get a recession under his watch, he doesn’t want that being part of his legacy. There’s got to be the light at the end of the tunnel.

Hope is not a strategy, Daniela. Trump has basically said, I’m changing the rules but he won’t tell people what the rules are. The rules change when he wakes up.

I think I’ve heard of worse things. I mentioned Elon Musk calling trade advisor Peter Navarro, you know, dumber than a sack of bricks. They’re not on the same page here.

I said eight years ago that Peter Navarro was the most dangerous economist in the country. A tariff on energy is a stupid idea. Could you see China saying we’re going to dump our treasuries and we’re going to dump our US dollars? Who cares? I mean, seriously, who are they going to dump their treasuries to? This is the exorbitant privilege of being the world’s reserve currency.

It’s one of the things I think Trump is putting in danger. Big breath. China saying it will fight to the end in a tariff war with President Donald Trump.

Elon Musk calls trade advisor Peter Navarro dumber than a sack of bricks. And Vanguard advising clients to stay the course and to resist the urge to deviate from their financial plan as markets are falling sharply here. How’s that for a sentiment check, folks? Joining me today to digest all of this and more, John Malden.

He publishes thoughts from the front line through Malden Economics and is a New York Times bestselling author. Please welcome to the program, the brilliant John Malden. How’s that for an intro, John? That was a great intro.

Thank you very much, Danielle. It’s 25 years I’ve been writing and, you know, I think we first met when you were like 14 years old, that’s right, 12, 12, 12. Actually, John, do you remember it was in Iceland? We had a, we were invited on this.

Yes, what a trip that was. What a trip, right? What a trip. So that was the last time we saw each other.

And how much has the world changed? If I had told you back then, whenever that was 10 years ago, that all this would unfold, would you have ever believed me? Maybe. And the reason I say maybe is that in 1994, Neil Howell, my close friend Neil Howell and Richard Shouse wrote a book called Generation. And in 1997, they wrote a book called The Fourth Turning.

And where they described for 400 years of Anglo-Saxon history, here’s how we repeat ourselves every 80 years in generational cycles. And they were calling, saying sometime in the late 20s, early 30s, we’re going to see something like what we’re seeing now, a generational change. World War II, the Depression, World War II, Civil War, the Revolutionary War, the whole Cromwell thing in England.

It just goes back and we repeat these cycles. So when you were saying there’s going to be significant change, I could have believed it. I might not have believed what you told me at the time, but I would agree with that we’re going to see change.

That’s a book I’m writing right now. I’m looking at four or five different ways people talk about generations of history when they’re looking back. And they all point to kind of a crisis coming up at the end of this decade.

And it’s not that Trump is the cause, okay? I mean, there were some people would say, no, Trump’s just the accelerant. This is a social mindset of people becoming frustrated for one reason or another and looking for change. And so that’s why we’re going back and forth and back and forth.

And I’m reminded of, I think it was Queen Victoria or Queen Victoria was saying with her council, her chamber, said, gentlemen, we have to have change. And Salisbury said, change, ma’am? Change? Aren’t things bad enough? Aren’t things bad enough? Sometimes you have to be careful when you’re asking for change, which is what we’re having right now. So that’ll lead us into some of the questions that you sent me.

Yeah, well, we’re talking points. And I mentioned the first one here, China, the latest coming up from there. And who knows by the time this airs Friday, John, what will happen with the negotiations.

But right now they want to fight to the end. What do you think happens here? Does China win? Does Trump win? Here’s the problem that we have. We are no more than 25% at best of China’s exports to the world.

And in most markets, in most niches, it’s 10 to 15%. So can they get along without us? Yes. Do they need us? Absolutely.

China’s problem is that they’ve lost the trust of the world. Their foreign direct investment has dropped from 80 billion back in 22 to zero today. The world has just said, no, we can’t invest in China.

And in fact, we want to try to get as much money out as we can. And the Chinese people are trying to get money out. The government has lost their trust.

And they’ve got a housing market that’s collapsing. Consumer spending is not rising. In fact, the savings is going up because the average Chinese, at least if you’re looking at their behavior, is just as concerned as we are.

Now, they may be very pro-China, just like we’re very pro-US, but their behavior says, we’re concerned about the future. And I think for everybody in the world, that’s the correct position right now. But going back, everybody, and I’ve lived a few years now, we were always concerned about the future.

There’s never been a time in history where everybody says, everything’s going to be perfect in the future. So here we are. Let me ask you this.

Let’s play out this scenario. Could you see China saying, okay, US, we’re going to dump our treasuries and we’re going to dump our US dollars. Then what? Who cares? I mean, seriously, who are they going to dump their treasuries to? They’re going to sell it to somebody.

We’re not buying them. So is Russia going to buy them? Japan? Somebody in the world has to buy those treasuries. This is the exorbitant privilege of being the world’s reserve currency.

And it’s the one thing that I think Trump, it’s one of the things I think Trump is putting in danger. We have the exorbitant privilege of getting stuff from the rest of the world. Nike shoes, t-shirts, chips, whatever.

And they take our dollars. I mean, Trump says we don’t export anything. Yes, we do.

We export dollars. Now we also export more than we ever have. We manufacture more than we ever have.

But we export dollars and they get those dollars and they’ve got to do something with them. Typically, they ended up at a central bank and the central bank ends up buying treasuries. But a lot of times it ends up in people’s hands.

They say, we want to buy your stocks. Part of the reason, 19%, at the beginning of this year, 19% of our stock market was owned by foreigners. You think they’re not pulling their money out? That’s part of the reason we’re having the crash because they’re losing confidence.

They’re not certain of what’s going to happen. And if you’re an investor and you’re facing uncertainty, what you do, you pull back, you stop. Maybe you move.

There are other places that look less uncertain. And so I’m not worried about China saying, we’re going to dump your dollars. To who? Okay, well, let me ask you this.

Could they be like, forget the dollars, we’ll sell it for gold? Well, they could put it in gold, sure. And China’s buying gold. But who’s going to sell them that gold? Those dollars still have to go somewhere.

They still have to buy. I mean, say they go to London or Switzerland, they buy gold. Those dollars are London and Switzerland’s problem.

They’re not coming back to the US. Nobody’s selling gold here. We’re seeing internal conflicts brewing now.

I mentioned Elon Musk calling trade advisor Peter Navarro, you know, dumber than a sack of bricks. So they’re not on the same page here. I mean, I said eight years ago that Peter Navarro was the most dangerous economist in the country.

I think I said something like, which I repeated this week, Peter Navarro has the economic understanding that God gave a goose. So I… So much for that PhD. So much for that PhD from Harvard.

Somebody on Twitter wrote that, you know, do you think Musk, you know, has better understanding than Navarro? And somebody answered, well, my friend David Bonson answered, well, Musk is, you know, greater than Navarro, but a baked potato is greater than Navarro. So Navarro sees things in this trade world that just aren’t real. I mean, he thinks that Vietnam is taking advantage of us because they sell us Nike t-shirts, and I mean, Nikes and t-shirts and other stuff.

And they, you know, we buy like 130 billion or so from Vietnam. They only buy 13 billion of our stuff. Well, they’re only making an average of $4,000 a person.

They can’t buy a lot of our stuff. I mean, that’s not the deal. The deal is we get cheap labor there, and we need that because we don’t want people in sweatshops.

Like when I was growing up, we, you know, there were 340,000 people in the garment district and sweatshops in New York making all sorts of clothes. And those were not fun places to work. We have to bring people in from Latin America, Mexico a lot, to harvest our food, and we give them temporary visas.

We do it every year because people don’t want to go harvest food. I’ve actually worked in hayfields growing up, you know, that’s hard, hot, sweaty work. As the US, we’re trying to move up the food chain, just like Singapore did.

Lee Kuan Yew, they started out manufacturing labor markets in the 60s. I mean, just making t-shirts, okay, and things. And they moved up the chain.

And now you go to Singapore, and they are the highest tech manufacturing. They’re the highest tech services. I mean, they’re a shipping powerhouse.

They’ve moved up the food chain, which is what all countries want to do. I mean, we’re putting a tariff of, I think it was 40% or something like that on Lesotho, a little African country, been there. They make $1,000 a year.

I don’t know, they can’t buy our stuff. And we want to put a tariff on the few things they sell? I mean, they’re not our market. Now, do I think that we should be approaching China differently? Yes, China’s a different case.

Vietnam’s pretty open to us. Their tariffs are minimal, okay? They could go to zero tariffs, and it wouldn’t make any difference. It literally wouldn’t make any difference how much they buy, okay? So you think China’s justified? And they have a mercantilist policy, a protectionist policy, and that’s a problem.

But 90% of the countries, 95% of the countries on Trump’s wall of doom, those countries aren’t cheating us. What about the European countries? Europe, there’s two problems with Europe. Number one, they’ve lived on, I mean, and I think Trump is right on this, they’ve lived under our umbrella, and they’ve taken advantage of our defense.

And the deal was with NATO, they were going to put X percent in, 2%, 3%, and they haven’t done that. And the US taxpayer has stepped up, and the Europeans get much greater social benefits than our country does. It’s not really fair.

They need to step up. And Trump tried to get them to do it the last time, they didn’t pay any attention. So, okay, now let’s see if we can get your attention.

That’s correct. Now, if they went to zero tariffs on American cars, Europeans aren’t going to buy many American cars. I’m assuming you’ve been to Europe a few times, Danielle.

I am Italian, John. Huh? I am Italian, John. When you go to Italy, you don’t see many big cars.

No. The gasoline is expensive, and the parking spots are small. I mean, we don’t make cars in general for Europeans.

We make them for American markets and bigger markets. We could sell some, and yes, we’d sell more. There are places that people want Suburbans and Escalades and so forth.

But I would prefer them to open up their agriculture market, just like I would like Japan to open up their rice market. I mean, I’m pretty much a free trade. I don’t want governments telling people what you can do and how to run your businesses, whether it’s a Democrat government or Republican government.

You just get out of the way. Businesses can figure out how to do what they can do. One more point, John.

You mentioned defense and how Europe has taken advantage of the US. And in fact, we just saw news today, Pentagon pulling out troops from Europe. That’s a separate topic.

Would you make the same argument against Canada, that Canada has taken advantage of the US? In general, we have the USMCA agreement. We should stick by that agreement until it’s time to, because that’s what we agreed to. It was Trump that negotiated.

When it’s time to renegotiate, I would like to renegotiate lower tariffs, more free trade. Is that going to hurt some Canadian businesses? Yes. Is it going to hurt some US businesses? Yes.

I mean, hey, I get it. Canada can make cheaper lumber than we can. Okay, fine.

We can make cheaper dairy products than they can. I mean, and it’s going to come down to negotiation. We’ll see who wins in the Canadian elections.

I have papers, of course. But I would like to see more free trade. I think putting a tariff on energy is a stupid idea.

I mean, I want to see pipelines crossing the border everywhere. So can I ask who you would like to see? I’m guessing you’d like to see a conservative win in Canada. I would much prefer Poliv to Carney.

Absolutely. Carney is a step up from Trudeau. I mean, like a big step up.

I mean, there’s a reason that you’re getting a separatist movement in Alberta. And I don’t think that can ever happen. Yeah.

But it’s an emotional point where the Albertans are really disadvantaged to the rest of Canada, because of the taxes, because of the… And even their provinces. Can you imagine New York saying to Texas or Florida, well, you can’t ship your food or your cattle. We’re only going to take beef from blue states, or from states that have this type of income, or vice versa.

Texas saying, we don’t want anything that comes… No, no. The US is a free trade zone, and that’s what made us strong. And Alberta is frustrated because it’s not a free trade zone.

That’s a good point, John. I’ve been saying it. If any silver lining, it’s that it’s shined the light on Canada’s broken policies, and hopefully the country will start waking up.

Just before we move on to markets here, overall, do you think that the US will walk away from all these trade negotiations on top? Will the US eventually get what they want and win here? Hope is not a strategy, Daniella. I hope it does, but that’s not a strategy. Are we going to get what we want in every case? No.

Will we get some of what we want? Yes. I mean, some countries, if you’re Argentina or Vietnam, you say five, nine, thank you, whatever you want. If you’re China, if you’re Europe, if you’re Canada, no, they’re going to want to negotiate, and they feel they have the ability to do so, and they will.

I mean, would I like to see a free trade zone with Europe and Canada? Absolutely. Do I want to take European policies that have strangled their companies and put them into the US? No, I don’t. I mean, Europe has a problem.

They’re not growing. And they had a commission, and they said, well, gee, guys, it’s Brussels and the regulations that we have, and we need to change that. But they don’t want to change the regulations because much of it’s protectionist.

The French farmers want their subsidies. The German auto manufacturers want their subsidies. I mean, I had it in my letter last week.

Let me do a five-second plug. My letter is at Malden Economics. It’s free.

I’ve been writing it for 25 years. Just go to it, put your name in, become one of my 1 million closest friends. My plug is over now, Daniela.

I put a graph in, I think I did, last week that showed German manufacturing jobs. Germany is exporting more than it’s ever done. I mean, it’s like monster compared to the US in terms of percentage of its GDP.

Their manufacturing jobs since 1950 have been going from the upper left to the lower right. They’re losing manufacturing jobs every year. Why is that? Because just like the US, we’re using more technology to make stuff.

People keep talking about China stole our jobs. No, they didn’t. Technology did.

And they didn’t steal jobs. They made us more efficient. I mean, in 1800, 80% of the people worked on farms.

Today, we produce massive amounts more food with 1% to 2%. Nobody wants to go back to everybody working on the farm. We’ve become more efficient.

We’ve used technology. We’re producing more cars than we ever have, better cars. I was talking with a friend of mine, and we were laughing about how our cars in the 1960s, we started thinking about having to trade them in or buy new ones when the car hit 60,000 miles because it started having problems.

Today’s cars just are getting broken in barely. The tires last 60,000 miles. I mean, the cars, everything’s improved.

And it’s going to continue to improve. I’m an optimist about the future, not so much about government. I’m an optimist about the future of humanity.

I mean, we’re going to have to learn to adjust. In 10 years, you’re going to be buying a robot for roughly what you’re buying, a $30,000 robot, $300 a month, that will be able to do all your housework and your yard work. Or if you’re a business, you can get them making stuff and manufacturing all the little stuff.

I mean, and they’ll be AI driven. I mean, that’s going to be a change. It’s going to be a real change.

And we went from the factory to the farm over five or six generations. I mean, from the farm to the factory over five generations. Now we’re going to do it in like half a generation, a generation.

That’s really screaming fast. So we’re going to have to do a lot of adaption. And those of us who are free market, everybody should stand up for themselves, individuals.

We’re going to have to recognize that there are people that are going to get left behind because we haven’t educated people enough. The jobs may or may not be there. Things are going to be changing.

We’re going to have to figure out this. We’re all in this together boat. And don’t ask me how that’s going to look because we’re not there yet.

But we’re going to have to change our view of how government is involved and how things work. John, you have me thinking. It is not a pleasant conversation for a conservative, quasi-libertarian like me to be having, but it’s the truth.

You know, it makes me think, yeah, maybe we’re definitely more efficient, but maybe living on the farm, those were just better times and days. You never were on a farm, Daniela, I can tell you. No, I know from stories of my parents who were born right after, you know, at the end of World War II in Italy.

And I know it was not, these were not easy times. No, they weren’t easy times. And there are up and downs, and just like there is in any business, and you’re subject to the weather.

One of the things that all economists can agree on is we’re subject to incentives. And what we have to recognize is we have to make sure that people have the right incentives to work, businesses have the right incentives. And one of the things they’re going to do is their incentive is to make their life better.

That’s what we want. We want to make the lives of our children better. I mean, there’s lots of things that, I mean, I’ll just give you an example.

My 39-year-old twin daughter, we adopted her, and she had open heart surgery last week in Tulsa, you know, double bypass. It was just, it’s a genetic thing. And the technology that they had her on was, I mean, you walk into the hospital room, it was literally eight computers were feeding into her from different things.

And they said yesterday that they had, they were 12. And the technology was fabulous. Saved her life.

Doctor had said after it got into her heart, she wouldn’t last another month. And it was just, it’s just a genetic. Now, her insurance is irrationally high, and it has a $10,000 deductible and 10,000 co-pay.

And they’re working class families, middle-class families. So you try to figure out how to make life for your kids better. That’s what we all do.

We try to figure out, everybody is trying to make their own way in life. I didn’t mean to get philosophical. You want to talk about markets, so.

No, no. I think I brought you on that path. But I’m happy to know that your daughter- That she’s doing well.

Yes. Fantastic. That’s what, you know, at the end of the day, that’s all that matters.

Wanted to share this email that Vanguard sent its clients, John. It says, you know, we’ll fire it up on the screen. There’s a state of course, we’ll be right there with you.

Basically saying, you know, with the White House announcements, there’s all this volatility. But during uncertain times, folks, resist yours to deviate from your financial plan. So they’re asking clients, begging clients not to take money out of the market.

What do you make of that? How’s that for a sentiment check? Well, first of all, you have to remember who started Vanguard and why. And they were in the, you know, kind of random walk. And so you, you know, they want you to stay in the markets because over the long term, long term being 20, 30, 40 years, not two years or three years or 10 years, over the long term, markets have gone up.

So stay the course, you know, it’s like the whole old George Bush first thing, stay the course, a thousand points of light, you know, that line. So that was, that was Vanguard’s reason for being, a je ne sais quoi. I mean, that’s just what they did.

So that’s not anything new for them. I don’t follow that approach. I’m not, I haven’t changed any of my mark of my portfolio at all.

I mean, I’m still doing the same things. I haven’t sold anything, if you will. We’re, we are shifting some assets from some hedge funds in back, actually into the market.

But that was determined five, six months ago. Here’s our process, here’s what we’re moving to. And it’s a, for me, it’s a bet on the American future, dividend stocks.

I’m still have a lot of alternatives. I still have my gold. It’s still sitting in the vault.

It hasn’t moved. Well, I was going to ask you, can you share? I was buying it in the early 2000s. So, you know, I’m very happy with it.

And I’ve got a lot of capital gains. But my hope is those capital gains go away. I hope gold goes to zero, because that means everything else worked.

And I can give those coins to my kids to play checkers with. Now, I don’t think that’s what’s going to happen. Unfortunately, I think my gold is going to continue to go up, because I think the world is going to become less certain.

But there may come a time, if there comes a time when I sell my gold, one of two things will happen. Either John Mauldin has personally had some problems he needs to sell his gold, or the world has really gotten perfect and gold is not a point. I think the former is more likely than the latter.

Though we try to do everything we can to, you know, predict the future. Not sell your gold. Can you share a little bit more of what you’re saying? Your long stocks then, John? You don’t look at this and escape? You don’t dance close to the door, as someone said to me earlier this week? I made a living, and a good one, in the late 90s and early 2000s, timing the market.

Because there were certain ways you could look at European markets to the US markets, and you really could time the market. There are other ways, long-term moving average, you can time the market. Timing the market has become exquisitely different.

And first of all, I don’t even think there is such a thing as the market. There are a lot of stocks. I want to be long, a lot of stocks.

There are some stocks I don’t want to be long. There are stocks that I’m holding for the long term. So, if you’re dancing close to the door, you’re not an investor, you’re a trader.

You should be thinking about, what do I want my portfolio to look like a year from now, two years, five years from now? Where do I think, in my view, I want to bet on America. I’m Warren Buffett like that. Now, in the short term, is Europe going to outperform, has outperformed in the short term, the US? Yes.

Could I have made that call in January? No. Rather than letting your emotions, or this is what I think is going to happen. And there’s some people, by the way, that are very good macro traders.

There’s some brilliant macro traders. I’m going to tell 99.5% of your listeners that they are not. You’re just not Stan Druckenmiller, neither am I. I’m not Leon Cooperman.

I’m not one of those guys. And I mean, I’ve got a lot of the same data they have. They think differently.

Interesting. So, I’m going to think longer term, what do I believe the world in 2035 is going to look like? We’re going to be buying food. We’re going to be buying medicines.

We’re going to need housing. We’re going to need clothing. We’re going to need all the things that we need today.

We’re still going to want to be family. We’re still going to want to travel. I mean, I want businesses that have repeatable mechanism, good times and bad times, and they pay me a dividend and a healthy dividend to own their stock.

And if their stock goes up too much and their dividend falls, I’m not buying any more of it. Maybe I’ll sell it because their stock has gone up. It’s given me five or 10 years worth of dividends in one year, and I find another stock.

I want to be in alternatives that don’t care what the market does. I want a lot of private credit. I want macro.

There’s certain types of hedge funds I want. There’s certain times I don’t want. There are ways to find, to reduce your volatility, to find peace of mind.

My market’s down 20%, my portfolio that I’m going into, down five, maybe, maybe. I literally don’t check it, so I don’t know. You mentioned Warren Buffett and his decision now to sit on 300 billion in cash, obviously paying off while other billionaires were wiped out.

I mean, does this just solidify his status as the greatest investor of all time, when you’re speaking about they just think different, right? If you look at when he builds cash up, it’s generally when he thinks there’s a buying opportunity coming because their company generates a lot of cash. He’s just not seeing a lot of things as a value investor that he wants to buy. Now, he has a problem and it’s called size.

I mean, you’re sitting on 300 billion of cash, you got to put 30 billion into something to make it a meaningful number of your cash. For me, I can put 30,000 into something and that becomes meaningful. I can invest 30,000 and it gets sucked up.

30 billion is harder to do. He’s got a size problem, but nonetheless, there are going to be some phenomenal buys out there and will be. I mean, look at all the great new companies that are coming up.

There’s a lot of entrepreneurship, a lot of value being created everywhere. Let’s wrap with this, John. I’m just looking at warning signs you’re looking at.

You recently wrote about junk bond spreads signaling a worry for you, jumping the most since March of 2020. Any other indicators you think we should be paying attention to? Well, I believe that we’re going to see the first quarter coming in at what I would call a statistical recession. I’m sure you’ve had other people that you’ve interviewed talk about the massive amount of gold that’s come into the US in the first quarter, people trying to jumpstart, get ahead of the tariffs.

It turns out there’s probably not going to be tariffs on gold. But imports actually reduce GDP on a statistical basis. We’ve had, I don’t know, you can probably better than me, my back of the napkin says something like 150 billion of gold came in first quarter.

That’s enough to move GDP by one to one and a quarter, maybe one and a half percent down. The last time I looked at the Atlanta Fed GDP now, they were talking like a two and a half percent negative GDP for first quarter. But for the first time ever, they put in a dotted line that says, here’s what it would be without gold, because gold has pushed it down so much.

It’s still negative territory. It’s still around 1% negative GDP. But gold has moved it that much, one trade.

And I would just gently suggest to you that people buying gold is not an actual negative statistical effect. It’s just the way we calculate GDP. So I think what Trump is doing and creating certainty, and he’s creating a lot of uncertainty, is going to give us a recession this quarter.

So we’re going to have two back-to-back quarters, which is the definition of a recession. It’ll be negative. It’ll be the Trump recession.

And I’ve said this with every other recession before, markets go down during a recession. They just do. And so you need to have had your plan last year, because you should have been planning for a recession.

Not that you thought a recession was going to happen, but that one could always happen. So what’s my plan? How am I going to go through it? I think we’re going to have a recession. What do we know? Markets always come back.

Now, they don’t come back necessarily fast, but they will come back. And so you need to have a strategy. How are you going to feather back in? If you’ve been wise enough to have gotten out, how are you going to feather back in? So I would leave that.

I’ve seen in my lifetime, business lifetime, I like eight recessions. I mean, I don’t know. They come and go.

I lived through 80, 82 as a young businessman. I was borrowing money from the bank at 18% to buy carloads of paper that I was turning and marking up 22 and 24%. I mean, it was crazy inflationary times.

That’s just what you did. We get through these things. We always do.

That’s what free markets do. Now, Trump is upsetting the apple cart. I’m hoping that they’re going to get some negotiations and he’ll have an offer.

Because Trump is never going to say he was wrong. That’s just not in his personality. But he will look for an off ramp.

And the more volatile the world gives, the closer that off ramp he’s going to be able to find. He’s going to be looking for one. Markets will figure it out.

We will figure this out. That’s what individuals do. Governments and the Federal Reserve do not get us out of a recession.

That drives me nuts when people say, well, the Federal Reserve needs to cut rate to keep us from having a recession or we’re in a… No, no, no. The Federal Reserve should, in my case, not be setting rates, but that’s beside the point. What gets us out of recession is a million businesses saying, well, here’s my reality.

This is what I’m going to do today. And I’ve got to reduce losses and create profits. And it’s those people changing their business model, changing their menus, restaurants or whatever.

They change things and they create their own profit. And that, in general, brings the entire country up. Businesses will do well.

Adjusting. What you said earlier, to start at the start, how to adjust. It makes me think, John, for Trump to have and knows he’s going to get a recession under his watch, right? He doesn’t want that being part of his legacy, that there’s got to be something.

There’s got to be the light at the end of the tunnel. He has to leave on a high note, is what I think he wants to do and accomplish. Whatever he wants to get done, he needs to get done between now and January of 27.

Because if we have a recession and they haven’t figured out how to pull this thing back by third quarter, midterms typically are not good for the party in the White House. Bush was the one exception to that. And that was 9-11.

Exactly. That, I mean, we’ve got a margin of five. He better get it done now.

My concern is that the more we tilt into the negative problems, can he get those, are there going to be some Republicans that are going to say, well, we’ll go along with this, extending the 2017 tax cuts, but we’re not going to go along with anything else? I think it’s absolutely possible. It’s going to be tough to get that house of cats to herd in one direction. I think we’re going to see more volatility, more uncertainty.

Trump has basically said to the world, I’m changing the rules, but he won’t tell people what the rules are. The rules change when he wakes up. That’s not, businesses need uncertainty.

I mean, businesses need certainty. Investors need certainty. If you’re a CEO of a company and you’re seeing, well, there’s going to be 47% tariffs or whatever they are on Vietnam, I can manufacture stuff now because now I can compete.

Are you certain about that? No. What if they change? Could it go away? I’m not going to put a shovel in the ground for six months or nine months or a year till I’m certain of what the future is going to look like. And that lack of certainty, I mean, first of all, big, major plants take four or five years.

Even small ones take a year or two years and small ones do have a little effect here and a little effect there, but they don’t add up quickly. We talk about recessions like it’s the end of the world. Daniela, have you ever had a time in your life where your income from one year to the next went down by 3%? Absolutely.

Okay. Was it the end of the world? Nope. Okay.

It was tough. Did you figure out what you were going to do next year? I figured it out and you come back bigger and better. Okay.

But the point is that let’s say we have a deep recession, 3%. That’s terrible. It’s epic proportions.

It’s 3%. Okay. We figure it out.

That’s what we do. And it sounds terrible. We’ve made it into this nasty thing.

And by the way, they’re not fun. I got eight kids and one of them called me yesterday that his company is cutting back on his hours and he just had another kid. He’s got fewer hours and his healthcare costs are rising because he’s got cancer.

It’s now in remission. Another one’s watching some of the bids from the companies they’re working with go away. Recessions are uncomfortable and they affect people and I am not making light of them at all.

But I don’t want to despair. I don’t want to panic. Deep breath.

What am I going to do to get myself and then my family and then my friends and then big on my mind every Friday morning is what am I going to do to get my readers through? I focused on that for 25 years. Big breath. Yeah.

That was fun. We got to do this more often. John Maldon, the brilliant John Maldon.

I am sending positive thoughts and prayers to your family. Eight kids, John. God bless.

Oh, yeah. Well, that’s why I’m still 75 years old and working. They keep you young.

And non-grandkids. And optimistic enough that I’m launching a brand new business with my doctor partner. We’re launching a series of what we hope will be in four or five years, 40 or 50 longevity clinics around the country.

Fantastic. Helping people live longer. That optimistic thing in me just, it’s there.

It’s a wonderful, wonderful character trait, John. You can read John Maldon economics, right, John? Thoughts from the frontline. Just click on it.

When you click on thoughts from the frontline, we will give you an opportunity to put your email address in. It’s free. And you’ll be one of my one million closest friends.

I’ll be there every Saturday morning in your inbox. Wow. John, let’s not wait 10 years or an Iceland trip to do this again.

Now that we’ve reconnected, we’ll be seeing more of each other. You’ve got my email and phone now, so we’re together. Yay, awesome.

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That’s it for me. Thanks for watching.