Explore the case for hard assets over paper, the pension system&#x27;s growing private credit exposure, and why deglobalization may reshape financial markets for a generation, with Macro Mavens founder Steph Pomboy. 00:00 Introduction 03:04 AI, leverage, and the dot-com parallel 05:54 The competition for capital in 2026 08:48 The $15 trillion capital problem nobody is talking about 09:51 The triple B debt crisis and corporate balance sheet risk 22:25 The Fed as buyer of last resort for treasuries 28:24 The private credit boom and the pension problem 39:27 The upside of deglobalization and reshoring 44:52 Trend or Fad?

Steph Pomboy: AI Debt Binge, Credit Cracks, &amp; Gold

Trends with Benefits

I think the deglobalization, and this is something that people don't really, haven't yet connected the dots to, is that isn't just an economic transition. It's a financial markets transition to a much leaner environment where suddenly the economy is going to gain the upper hand in the tug of war for liquidity. Returns in the financial markets will be much lower than

they have been over the last couple decades. Steph, welcome to Trends with Benefits. Thanks for joining. Steph, thank you. It's great to be here. And I mentioned this to you before, I just love the name of this conversation. It's brilliant. Steph, I think we have to thank Jan VanEck for that one. He came up with a good title. Steph, very clever.

Steph, how's the summer going? Steph, summer's going great. I'm in the West, which is my favorite place to be. It's just been beautiful. A lot of smoke this summer, unfortunately, because of the wildfires. But other than that, all good. And, you know, enjoying watching the ping pong back and forth in the markets and the headlines of Iran deal one day, no deal the next day and whatnot. So it's been a busy summer, let's say. How about you?

It's been really busy. It's too short. I wait all winter for it. And then it's like too short or it goes by too fast. And, you know, well, again, thanks for joining. There's, as you mentioned, there's a lot happening in the markets today. I mean, just since the last couple weeks since we spoke, I thought one of the more interesting stories for me, you know, we're going to talk about AI because everybody's talking about AI and maybe we hit it from a slightly different angle.

Steph Pomboy: AI Debt Binge, Credit Cracks, & Gold

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.

Steph Pomboy: AI Debt Binge, Credit Cracks, &amp; Gold

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast, not the earnings call.

Steph Pomboy: AI Debt Binge, Credit Cracks, & Gold

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.