The Bond Market Just Overruled the Fed

Gary Brode's argument is that the Federal Reserve has become a spectator. The Fed sets the overnight rate, but corporate borrowing is priced off the five year Treasury and mortgages off the ten year, and the bond market answered two years and 200 basis points of cuts by pushing long yields higher. With the ten year just under 5% and M2 growing about 5%, the real return on Treasuries is roughly zero, which is why Brode says Kevin Warsh is right that policy was never restrictive and why 25 basis points changes nothing. What matters instead is Congress, overspending by trillions a year, and a Treasury he reads as panicking through its buyback expansion and its yen purchases ahead of the midterms. His conclusion is to own what cannot be printed. He closes on a month in El Salvador, where he paid for lunch over Lightning and calls bitcoin a working currency.

Chapters

00:00 - Gary Brode on the Fed's First Hike Since 2023 02:03 - Why 2% Inflation Is Theft, Not a Target 04:30 - Congress, Nixon and the End of the Gold Standard 07:13 - What the Bond Market Is Telling the Fed 09:10 - The Fed Does Not Control Interest Rates 11:45 - Warsh Is Right, Policy Was Never Restrictive 15:24 - Why the Fed Is Now Irrelevant 16:10 - Hard Assets: Bitcoin, Gold, Silver, Uranium 21:45 - Why Bitcoin Rallied When the Treasury Panicked 26:10 - The Yen Intervention and the Reverse Carry Trade 31:09 - The Midterm Playbook and the Inside Information Line 39:22 - Gas Prices Are Not Up in 40 Years 46:00 - The 60/40 Portfolio and the AI Capex Risk 48:20 - OpenAI, NVIDIA and Circular Financing 52:56 - El Salvador: From 36 Murders a Day to Near Zero 56:00 - Bitcoin Beach, the Coffee Test and Lightning 1:02:13 - A Dollar Economy That Settles in Sats 1:05:47 - Where to Find Gary Brode