Whalen offers a piercing critique of the Fedβs structural dependency on public debt, effectively debunking the myth of a painless return to monetary normalcy. His analysis reveals how the banking system's addiction to abundant reserves has turned temporary policy into a permanent fiscal trap.
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Deep Dive
Chris Whalen: Warsh's Fed Earthquake, Silver Shortage, and Why Inflation Is Here to StayAdded:
I don't think you're going to see any rate cuts for a while. I think he's going to make some significant personal changes at the Fed. He's going to move people around. He's going to retire a lot of people. And that in and of itself is going to be a an earthquake in terms of the Central Bank of the United States.
>> [music] >> Hey everyone. Welcome back to this week's episode of The Wrap with Chris Whalen where we break down what's happening on Wall Street, Washington D.C. and everywhere in between. Chris, great to see you as always. Nice to see you, Julia.
Well, thrilled to have you on this week.
Um what a funny week it was. Um so >> Yes, it was. Made money though. Up you know >> That's good. We always like hearing that.
>> right rocking. Let's go. All right, let's jump right in. Um the latest version of The Wrap, AI and metal surge, dollar gyrates, and private credit sinks. You noted that the Fed's balance sheet is growing again even though Kevin Warsh wants to shrink it. And I know you had a quarterly call with folks who are subscribers to you this week. And you also said there's basically a one-to-one relationship with public debt. So, I'd love for you to explain that. And do you think Warsh can actually reverse that trend?
Uh well, it's a very good question. Um the what's happening with the Fed is that they have to continue to buy a certain minimum amount of Treasury bills and and notes.
It's simply because those roll off. On the other hand, the mortgage-backed securities they have, which is about $2 trillion at this point, you know, are not moving very fast at all because interest rates are relatively high. and that means prepayments on those pools of mortgages are very low, well below the kind of average rate of 6% a year. So, you know, the Fed had to start growing their balance sheet to some degree. Can Kevin Warsh, in a systemic sort of fashion, push down reserves to where they were before COVID, and even before uh Ben Bernanke started quantitative easing, and then use that as a bargaining chip with other members of the committee to lower interest rates in general, a kind of a supply-side uh approach to monetary policy, if you will. That's an open question. I think there is a gearing relationship or a ratio between the Fed balance sheet and the amount of public debt we have. Cuz ultimately, remember the Fed has to make sure that the Treasury market is open.
Uh during COVID and several times before that, when the market had problems, they had to come in and buy. And when they buy securities from banks, that makes deposits grow, and that really inflates the size of the banking system, which is ultimately inflationary. Cuz those banks then have to go out and buy assets to invest in. And that's why you have such a strong bid out there for risk-free assets, private credit, whatever it is, cuz that's the only thing that they can buy.
They're very much constrained. So, it's it's something that we're going to be talking about on an ongoing basis. Uh we'll see what Kevin Warsh is able to accomplish in this regard. But there are, you know, some people, including Warsh, who want to go back to having what we call the scarce reserve approach to monetary policy, as opposed to the Yellen, Powell, even Bernanke approach, which was to give the banks as many reserves as they wanted to avoid problems.
Do you think um, regardless, like we'll continue to see a more inflationary environment then?
Yes, mostly because of the war with Iran. You know, as we've discussed, energy prices, a lot of the different inputs that come out of energy, silver.
Uh, silver was on a tear again this week because there is physical shortage of the metal. You cannot deliver it.
There's other things going on in Asia.
For example, they haven't been able to import metal into India for the past couple of weeks, which is causing quite a squeeze. So, that you know, I think you're going to see an inflationary environment for the balance of this year, simply because there are so many factors pushing prices up in a in a variety of areas. You know, health care is not going down. Uh, there are many other, uh, domestic, uh, factors that are certainly not going down. And, you know, it's it's just part and parcel of the system where you have either disruptions of supply or you have other factors, like too many dollars chasing too few investment opportunities, >> [clears throat] >> and that causes inflation. You still have money pouring into private credit, Julia.
You know, you would think people would have been, uh, a little bit cautioned at this point, but no, cuz there's nowhere else to go. I'm working with a good friend of mine on a private, uh, credit strategy focused on residential mortgages. There are trillion dollars worth of residential mortgages out there that have sideways.
So, you know, I think you're going to see a lot of investment dollars flowing into these, uh, credit strategies on the assumption that we're going to have a an uptick in, uh, in delinquency.
Well, wait, okay. So, because there's been a lot of talk about private credit lately, is this, uh, surprising move or trend? Is this counter to what you might expect or is it just looking for various opportunities within the credit universe?
When you've had a decade of relatively low default activity, mostly because of the Fed, eventually you're going to have a reset. And that's what I think a lot of investors are betting on when they put money in the private credit. But at the same time, I mean, you've seen endless numbers of managers, most recently we saw Golub Capital, which is a very well-regarded firm, but why were they putting retail investors and even high-net-worth individuals, even small family offices, into strategies which are by definition illiquid?
You know, private credit strategies are not money market funds. They're not designed to give you liquidity whenever you want. So, that's that's really the issue, I think, Julia. Mhm. Cuz yeah, as you point out in the the wrap this week, um gosh, we had a lot of new headlines, but we had um BlackRock's TCP Capital markdown. Yeah. We had Apollo's plan for daily, uh though valuations by September. I guess the question is like, do investors really even care? Like, what's your read on this? Um like, is private credit still a systemic risk? Like, what's really going on?
>> No, I think a lot of investors are turned off by what they've been reading and what maybe they've experienced, too, in terms of private credit. Uh but you still have other investors that are looking to put money to work. So, I think it's going to be a bit of a wash.
Uh private credit certainly has taken a hit in terms of the attractiveness of the strategy. Remember last year? You had just about every mutual fund and bank around the world all touting how they were getting into private credit.
Mhm. Now, it's pretty quiet. Most of those ads have been pulled. You don't hear them talking about it in public anymore. And then, as we mentioned in the wrap, you know, Mark Rowan, the CEO of Apollo, started talking about how they're going to give everybody daily valuations. Well, that's nonsense. Who Who's going to come up with those valuations? Mark? Is he going to tell us what they're doing? So, I think that's really the issue. There's some mixed messages on private credit that are not necessarily going to encourage people to want to get back into it.
Mhm. But could that be a good thing then to not have like everybody piling in?
>> Yes, but then people have to go somewhere else. Again, remember the basic thesis we have working when it comes to inflation and asset prices, this is still have way too many dead presidents looking for returns. And that's going to continue. You know, when central banks are growing the money supply, when they have to accommodate the debt issuance of their respective governments. Look at France. France is completely underwater and they have a political uh gridlock that makes it impossible for them to deal with fiscal issues. So, they're kind of in the same boat as the United States right now, but they don't have the dollar to help them manage it.
Wait, elaborate a bit more on this dynamic then and what this kind of means uh for markets when you have everyone chasing yield in various places. Like what does this kind of mean for the markets?
Well, we've talked about how the passive bid for stocks, you know, the Michael Green thesis has tended to keep stock prices going up. And then, you have the particular example of AI, which is not a particularly profitable endeavor, but a lot of money is being spent. So, people are chasing that one because they see all the movement, they see it a lot of capital raising going on, and they see the results in terms of the earnings of firms that support that. I own AMD. The stock has taken off.
Nvidia is still benefiting from this to a lesser extent. All of the infrastructure companies that are building data centers and providing services for that activity are benefiting as well. Will we make money on AI at the end of the day?
I you know, I still I'm kind of skeptical of this cuz I think most companies that are really smart, the ones I work with are using AI internally.
The customer facing uses of AI are an expense. And they say they save money by doing it. I'm not so sure about that.
The internal productivity, I guess.
Yeah, cuz I Yeah, software design, systems design, risk management. There's a whole you know, slew of issues that AI can address as an internal facing function for most organizations.
And it's good. You know, you For example, AI can kick you in the leg and say, "Hey, you missed this." But the risk could be like if you messed up on the customer facing side, ooh, that could be bad.
Um Well, you got trial lawyers. That's always a problem, right?
>> [laughter] >> Um AMD, that's been a winner for you cuz yeah, I think that >> Yeah, I like the stock. I've been in it for years. I kept buying a little bit now and then and boom, all of a sudden it takes off. But again, could you have predicted that, Julia? No. This is a function of the herd. The herd suddenly decided, "Okay, let's buy more AI facing companies." And even though Nvidia has been the major beneficiary of AI, there's so much pizza that AMD is getting their slice, too. That's what it comes down to. There's so much revenue, so much opportunity that can't be addressed even by Nvidia with all the capex they've been throwing at things, that other firms are benefiting as well.
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So, like we've seen um this influx of cash, 401(k)s, the passive bid, um people pouring money people still pouring money into private credit despite the bad headlines. Um so, I guess question is are we setting up for like a longer-term risk here then?
Is that the risk?
>> funny. Our our friend Mike Green has been writing about this, which is what happens when the net flow goes from positive to negative. One of our our viewers asked this question before last week and and said, "What happens then?"
And the answer is the markets go down.
Uh there is a kind of systemic bias towards things going up because so much new money is continuing to pour into the system, but if you ever get to the point where you have net liquidations of some of these vehicles, then they will go down in price pretty rapidly.
That's the trouble with ETFs. They're great on the way up and they're terrible on the way down cuz they accentuate both moves.
Let me ask you just like a funny thing that happened this week. Um what do you make of the GameStop CEO's interview on CNBC with the bid for eBay? Did you watch that? Uh yeah, I I I wrote about it actually. I think, you know, to me it just GameStop uh stock has not been doing very well as a stock. eBay has.
eBay is one of the few legacy fintech plays out there that's actually done pretty well in the last year if you look at the charts. And I think uh the guys at GameStop were just trying to draw attention to themselves and get something new to talk about cuz that's a stock where the narrative has gotten very stale. And, you know, there's money out there. He's got uh God, who was it uh second-tier Japanese bank, I think, that had given him uh an uncommitted line with the bank >> or something. Uh Oh, no, that's right.
It was TD Bank. I was thinking of uh somebody else. But you know, there's the banks are so hungry that they're willing to lend their names to these crazy ideas. Nobody's going to take GameStop stock as consideration in a merger transaction. He's got to go out and raise cash if he really wants to do this. But I I don't think it's going to happen. Uh I I really think that, you know, this is a case where if his stock had been soaring, then he could go out and buy things, right? But right now GameStop, you know, the stock is down at 52-week lows. I I just can't see that transaction actually coming to fruition.
Yeah, that was a such it was just such a bizarre exchange, too. I don't know.
Hmm. Well, he he was at Milken, I think, is when he popped this.
>> Or Or No, he went on with the Andrew Ross Sorkin and like was like read the website. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. It It's just puffery. I don't I don't think there's any real chance that this transaction's going to come to fruition. Mhm. All right, let me go back to where we were earlier in the conversation. I have a couple more questions on the Fed for you. Cuz you had a quarterly call this week, too, and you and I've talked about Warsh as an inflation hawk, supply-sider as you point out. Yep. What's the first big change you expect him to make? Not like one that you want him to make, but what do you expect from him?
Um what do you think that might be? I think he's going to make some significant changes to how the Fed staff spends their time. I think you're going to see him change the models they use to guide monetary policy, which is going to be upsetting to many economists who've built their careers on interpreting these models.
Um he just has a different view of the world than uh Jerome Powell or Janet Yellen, who are both kind of left progressive uh neo-Keynesians.
He's much more, as you said, on the supply sider. David Zervos wrote a great piece about this in the FT last week, and I I just think that it's going to be a a much broader change than most people understand.
Um this is going to be one of the more significant changes in the leadership of the Fed going back half a century.
And mostly, I think, in a conservative vein. The last Fed chairman who was even remotely uh conservative was Paul Volcker, but you know, he was a Democrat from uh New Jersey who had worked for Chase Bank.
Uh Paul never did anything that would be an inconvenience to big banks. So, I I I think that, you know, he's going to be a change that we have not seen before.
And that's why I'm I'm kind of excited to see what what happens because, you know, he's got Mickey Bowman running bank supervision now. She's a very level-headed former banker. She understands the industry real well, but not an ideologue by any means.
Warsh is much more ideological than any Fed chairman I can think of really going back many, many years. So certainly a welcome change to the central bank. Um >> Oh, yeah.
Any update on your outlook for uh Fed funds rate? We just had the jobs report come out. Um better than expected. Anything Yeah. It I don't think you're going to see any rate cuts for a while.
Warsh is going to have to get seated at the Fed, um establish some sort of a rapport with the other members of the committee, and then if he starts making changes to the metrics they use to measure monetary policy, he's going to have to sell that to the other members of the committee.
Now, the chairman, as we've written in the blog, has absolute authority over the board. He is the chief executive officer. He runs the staff. The other governors, of course, can express their opinions, but they don't have any power operationally to change the agency. I think he's going to make some significant personnel changes at the Fed. He's going to move people around.
He's going to retire a lot of people, and that in and of itself is going to be a an earthquake in terms of the central bank of the United States.
Um well, we will certainly be talking about that one, Chris, as that unfolds.
Um looking forward to yeah, just another week, right? Uh the 15th of May.
Let's [laughter] go.
>> Another week, yeah, I suppose. No, this has been a crazy week because we've been on and off again with the war in Iran.
Yeah.
Uh we've had reasonably good economic data. There there's nothing that shows you that employment is threatened. So it's going to be hard for members of the FOMC, I think, to come up with a good argument that says, "Hey, we got to cut interest rates." Mhm. If anything, you know, I I think I mentioned during one of our last conversations, I had waited to price our mortgage for our new house, and we got down to about 4.2% on the 10-year, which enabled us to get pretty decent execution on our new loan, and now it's popped back up again. So, what you're seeing is as those benchmark rates that particularly uh go to pricing for securities in the corporate sector, and also, you know, residential mortgages, corporate mortgages, are all up.
And for the Fed, that's tough, because, you know, if you start pushing down short-term rates and the long end is going up, you're going to have a steeper yield curve, and that says to people, "Inflation."
No. So, you know, the messaging here is not conducive to a a cut in the fed funds rate anytime soon. Um by the way, I also closed on my first house >> I know, congratulations. Thank you so much, Chris. I just cuz I've talked about it for so many years with this audience, and I'm I finally did it, y'all. Okay.
>> You're now a homeowner.
Yes, and I have a mortgage. Um but it's exciting. I'm really, really I'm really grateful, and really grateful for all the support um as well. All right, on your quarterly call, also in the wrap, the the war in Iran, the hostilities, still dragging on with the conflict, how much how much does that continue to still be a major risk? Like when you say, it seems like Oh, is there going to be a deal? Maybe there's not going to be a deal. Um as we drag on here, is there a point where if we reach a certain date, it is just like Well, we've already reached it. Um I think for the US, by the time we get to the end of June, you're going to see some really dramatic shortages both in terms of fuel and byproducts that come out of the refining sector.
Other parts of the world, Asia particularly Australia and Europe, they've already had to make pretty severe changes. You're seeing airlines drop flights. You're seeing other changes because of price. So, you know, even if we had peace tomorrow, which is not going to happen, Julia, we are going to have an impact and inflation is going to be higher for the balance of this year. There's almost nothing we can really do about that. So, I you know, what I keep telling our readers and I'll I'll mention it again for your viewers is the the impact of this war is going to go on for years.
Simply to get everything back online, start to repair some of the damage done, uh would take months if not a couple years. And then think about it, what incentive do the Iranians have to cut a deal with the United States and particularly Israel? Because Israel is not going to stop military activity in Lebanon. They're not going to stop their overall hostility towards their neighbors because that's why Benjamin Netanyahu is still in office.
If he were to back off on the attacks in Lebanon, uh he would probably lose uh and end up out of office. So, the the right wing in Israel is really controlling this entire narrative. And there's not a whole lot Washington can do to control them.
I'm even wondering if the Israelis are going to hold their elections this fall because there's such um, you know, internal debate and conflict between left and the right in Israel over the the direction of government policy and everything else that you you really have to wonder what's going to end up happening in that country. All right, what would be the implications of that?
Like, where would we I'm just maybe from the investor lens here. Yeah. And Israel's a small country. It doesn't impact the investment world very much.
It's a very significant country in the Middle East. It's obviously an important ally to the United States. But the you know, the right-wing tendency has total control over politics. And what they want is more settlements. They want to drive a a buffer, if you will, around Israel by pushing Hamas and the other groups away from the border. And that's just going to continue the military conflict in the region. So, you know, I I think that's unfortunate.
I wish there were a way we could move towards peace, but that's not the direction you see people heading. It's really they're moving in the opposite direction.
Mhm. It sounds like they'll be years long year long impacts for years um from all of this.
>> not good for It's certainly not good for oil prices. Yeah.
>> [laughter] >> Um >> what about Okay, if it's leading to more inflation, what about gold?
I I'm adding to my gold positions. You know, silver's been outperforming gold because of the structural supply issues that we've already touched on. Um but I do think gold is you know, it's sold off. That was a gift in my view and I've been adding to my positions cuz I I have done very well with that strategy. I still have some in my tech. I didn't get back into Nvidia. Uh but as I mentioned before, I had a big position in AMD.
And so, you know, I like that kind of AI precious metals trade. The other sectors are okay. Banks are not that attractive right now. Uh I've been telling my readers I'm not a big buyer of banks. Uh the mortgage sector, which we're going to write about on Monday, has been a mixed bag. The leaders are making money, but some of the others that we've talked about, United Wholesale Mortgage, are kind of having some problems.
So, you know, I think there there are sectors that are attractive right now from a trading perspective, uh but others are not. And then banks are not attractive right now for you.
What would make them more attractive?
Well, if rates were falling and they had more places to make loans, but loan demand has been relatively anemic. You know, there are too many other places where you can get money right now, Julia. You don't have to go to a bank.
In fact, the last place you should go if you're looking for a mortgage or financing for your business is a bank.
Mhm. That's always been the case, but even more today than ever before. Yeah, it's funny. I did not use a bank. Um I went with Freedom Mortgage, but when I went to the bank to transfer some I think it was getting my due diligence. I can't remember exactly. They were trying to sell me to do a mortgage with them at Bank of America. I was like, "No, I'm all set." Of course. But they can't get out of their own way. I I bank with Bank of America. I do too, yeah. I'll never forget the when I bought my house in New York, they said, "Oh, Mr. Whalen, we can talk to you in a couple weeks."
And I was like, "No." I got a mortgage from Freedom the next day. You got to move fast.
>> So, the non-banks are where you want to go. If you have an independent broker in your community that works with your realtor, talk to them because then they can market your loan to different lenders. Mhm.
>> much better execution. Yeah. Shout out to Freedom. I They are wonderful. Um all righty, viewer questions for you, Chris. We got a bunch of them this week.
All right, Raymond would like to know, "How could Kevin Warsh shrink the balance sheet of the Fed? This may even lead to more pressure on liquidity and bank reserves as we as we have already seen in the repo activity since October of 2025."
Well, as we already discussed, Warsh would like to go back to a scarce res you know, reserve regime. That means that they have to allow banks to count their holdings of T-bills and also maybe use the discount window when they need liquidity. Uh it's been discussed and debated within the Fed for a couple years now and we'll see. I'm not sure he can get it done. He has talked about it.
I know he wants to do it, but the reader question is right on target. How do you reduce reserves when everybody is used to having lots? Mhm.
>> the the the big reserve regime that we saw from Powell and Yellen has a certain way of of getting the banks comfortable and they make money on it. They take those funds and they earn a return on them. So, if you force them to deal with less reserves and they got to go off and do something else. Orca Trader 7 tweeted at us on X. Not clear to me how gold is a good investment under a tightening regime. Thank you. Uh I I don't know that there's any correlation between interest rate tightening and the price of gold. Gold ultimately has to do with supply and demand by global central banks and it's also a play against the dollar. So, if you have a tightening regime for interest rates, and that is to say rates go up, you saw this recently in the last couple weeks when the war was boiling over and everybody was worried, they went to dollars because it's liquid and it's perceived as being a safe haven.
When the war fears started to ebb, gold went up and so did silver even more. So, I wouldn't try and draw really harsh and and uh you know, mechanistic correlations between gold and interest rates cuz I'm not sure that they're they're very valid.
Can Chris comment on the lawsuit versus PennyMac for not honoring the floating LIBOR rate on their preferreds. They have only m- I don't know. They They are the only mREIT which has failed to do so and seems to question their integrity.
This comes from Robert.
Yes, good question. Um this forced me to go back and do some reading. Um what happened was the Fed a few years back decided that the LIBOR market was rigged. So, they got rid of it and they came up with a new short-term benchmark called SOFR, secured overnight funding rate.
Congress passed legislation uh back in 2022, I believe, that enabled borrowers like PennyMac to transition from LIBOR to SOFR.
PennyMac, for some reason, has taken a position that rather than doing that, they should just continue to pay a fixed rate of interest on their preferred. And I read through some of the litigation and and the rest of it. I don't know that they're going to win this battle. I know why they did it. They're trying to save money.
Uh but as, you know, your your viewer points out, this doesn't make you really respect their integrity that much. Um it's you know, it's just one of those weird things when whenever you have a big change like eliminating LIBOR as a benchmark for literally thousands and thousands of securities, uh it has it has implications and this is one of them.
All right. Hi Jillian and Chris. Chris, please give your thoughts on Annaly's recent earnings report, and I owe this viewer an apology. I meant to ask that one last week.
That's all right. Good earnings. They beat expectations.
They uh actually had a very nice rate of return over the past 12 months.
Pretty much uh you know, I I own the stock and as we've talked about before and I thought it was actually very positive. Well, it's a viewer favorite here. They love hearing your thoughts on it, Chris. Chris >> Yes, it is. But remember, it's a REIT.
It's here for income. It's not here for stock price appreciation.
Love it. Chris, what are you going to be watching next week? Oh, we're going to be watching interest rates and the war in Iran, the same old stuff. We're going to be watching inflation indicators. Uh I am going to be delving into the mortgage space and then we're probably going to review our non-bank list as well. Uh they've been all over the place. I mean, they it it's been a weird time because they ran really strong last year, but not not this year. So, it's hard to get direction on a lot of these stocks simply because uh you know, there there's so much noise out there in the markets. Well, I shall also encourage our folks to go and check out the great work that you're doing at the Institutional Risk Analyst. Um we do have a note in our show notes on how they can subscribe as well.
Um >> That's right. Yeah. Chris, I have to say I love doing this with you every single week. It's been such a pleasure. Chris Whalen, chairman of Whalen Global Advisors, author of the Institutional Risk Analyst, the very best independent analyst that you will find on Wall Street. Really appreciate you. And I want to say thank you to our partners over at Goldco. You can head over to goldco.com/therap to get your free 2026 gold and silver kit. Or you could also give them a call um at 855-573-0817. I will also link those details in the show notes.
Thank you so much, everyone. I hope everyone has a great weekend and that's a wrap. We'll see you next week.
Thank you, Julia.
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