LAND EXPO 4

This is the fourth installment of highlights from the Land Investment Expo in Des Moines, Iowa on Tuesday earlier this week.  I was the lunch speaker; I'm reporting on what others said.  The closing speaker of the day was Marco Papic, a macro and geopolitical strategist.                  

                  For the next 6-12 months, I'm bullish.  The year 2025 is all about the U.S. being expensive and things are ready to deflate.  BUT there won't be any change in land prices for the next 10 years--they won't go up or go down.

                  America is a consumption-based economy; 68 percent of GDP is consumption, which is why the AI bubble won't continue driving GDP.  Our current cash-driven cycle from the Trump-Pelosi $3 trillion stimulus and Biden's $2 trillion is fiscal profligacy that drove GDP the last five years.  That fiscal engine is over, and it was 500 percent more stimulus than the EU gave.  So how does Trump keep it going?

                  Answer:  by unleashing home value, which is tying up $15 trillion.  Trump will declare a nationwide housing crisis and lower interest rates.  He's already changed estate capital gains, which is why baby boomers are holding onto their houses.  So 2026 will be about extending the $15 trillion tied up in house equity to create another bubble to drive things through his presidency; it will collapse after he's out of office.

                  The weird thing is that we don't need this; things aren't bad; we're okay; things are picking up.  But if you're going to buy a house, buy it right now.

                  None of us has lived when the world was multi-polar; the only thing Americans alive today can remember is a uni-polar world run by the American empire.  So we assume multi-polar can't happen and can't imagine what it would look like if it did. 

                  A schoolyard with one bully is fairly peaceful and stable.  With two bullies, it's still not too bad as long as both sides stay on their end of the playground. The most unsafe playground is when there are no bullies; everyone's fighting.  That's multi-polar.

                  Uni-polarity is what drove modern wealth because rules and norms were clear.  Multi-polar is messy, and that's where we're headed right now.  The U.S. and China are NOT carving up the world into two camps.  Look at the concentration of military stockpiles diversifying in many nations.  What we've seen in military stockpiles in the U.S., Russia, and China before now will proliferate around the globe.  And the U.S. is concentrating everything into the Western Hemisphere.

                  The only big debtor nation is the U.S.  And we're the biggest buyer, so we've been able to bully everyone into line.  We're seeing the end of American exceptionalism.  The world will move away from U.S. bonds, U.S. markets, and U.S. dollars; this is why tariffs were seen as a way to bring things into balance and why gold is going up.  The only reason we dumped $5 trillion into the economy is because voters wanted it; we can only blame ourselves. 

                  As the dollar devalues, it'll make U.S. commodities more competitive.  The funny thing about Venezuela is that normally presidents lie to us about why they engage in military activity; Trump didn't lie; he said plainly "we're taking the oil."  As all this happens, physical things will go up in value and non-physical will plummet (Facebook, Netflix, etc.). 

                  The U.S. will have five years of bad performance and then we'll be fine.  We're priced too high on everything and we're seeing our comeuppance.  Once things balance, we'll come out okay.  Tariffs will come down in 2026.  Trump is burning through equity with his tariffs because it's not wanted by most Americans.  Nobody wants to pick their own strawberries; they want cheap labor to pick them.

                  The U.S. can do whatever it wants with Greenland.  The diplomatic problem is that Denmark has been a true friend, so we have a lot of political equity not to alienate our other friends by being difficult with Denmark over Greenland.  If it were France, which is an undependable friend, we wouldn't be so careful.  

                  Crypto is an asset, but on the speculative spectrum.  Be careful.

                  There you have it; one big fascinating day with people who live in a different world than I do.  I saw enough graphs to make me bug eyed for a week, but data is really interesting when you put it in pictures.

                  Hope everyone enjoyed these reports.  What did you find most interesting?