Episode Transcript
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 0:16
Once upon a time, there were 10s of 1000s of makers struggling every day they built for hours and hours but didn't ship and didn't earn enough income. One day, the no Caldwells podcast came to help them find a way because of this, makers became founders and live the lives they deserve. Because of that, founders live lives of abundance, freedom, and creativity. That's what I'm really all about. Hello, my name is Aziz and from being a poor boy born to a single mother in North Africa, with no opportunities, just sheer hard work, to failing multiple startups, yet learning a whole lot to barely escaping alive the war in Ukraine. I've lost everything twice. And now I'm rebuilding my life one more time. 1% a day sharing the wisdom of luminaries have interviewed on this podcast from Google executives to Amazon, Microsoft, Forbes, Technology Council, Harvard, Goldman Sachs, Financial Times and even a priest from the Vatican church. Everyone is welcome here. So let's begin. My guest today is John Aiden Byrne. John is an award-winning journalist, editor, Broadway alum, podcast host of DIG LIFE DEEP! as well as host/moderator of ODEON CAPITAL CONVERSATIONS with famed bank analyst DICK BOVE of Odeon Capital Group and MAT VAN ALYSTYNE, co-founder and managing partner at Odeon Capital Group. John, how are you today?
John Aidan Byrne 2:08
I see it's I'm really well, thank you for having me on your show. I'm really excited.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 2:13
Me too. I feel lucky, I feel blessed. And I feel ready to explore your mind. And so I'll begin with this conversation. What these days seems to be a topic that demands your attention or a problem that you're trying to solve or an insight that you keep on thinking about again, and again and again.
John Aidan Byrne 2:36
Wow, that's dig life deep to kind of material, the economy, our existential crisis, and our social problems, the polarization in the world and the globe, War and Peace breakdown overall in society and families, and how awful how all of that can be repaired, and how they're all tied together. A preoccupies a lot of my thinking.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 3:10
I love that those are all topics that are fascinating and dear, and near to my heart. And therefore, let's begin with the crisis facing everybody. What's your expectation? What's your biggest fear that you think we're like? A train moving towards the wall at high speed? What's that wall? And when do you think we will reset?
John Aidan Byrne 3:38
Wow. I mean, I don't want to come across as some kind of Prophet or guru or a forecast or who gets it 100% race, because that would be the height of hubris. I've always felt that there's a train wreck coming. And that train wreck will be driven by our global debt. I mean, just look at us. The debt we have in the globe today is far higher than we had when we had the financial crisis in 2008. In real, in real terms, nominal terms, statistically, whatever way you wish to measure that. So that's a real problem. And the odd thing, and maybe the eccentric thing to me is that you don't really hear that discuss much on Wall Street. What you do here, discussed, unrolled Street is servicing our debt, and it looks like at least in the coming months, we may be able to service our debt and maybe for the next several months next year, I don't know. We'll service our debt. And will we will in the meantime, enter recession and come out of it. But at some point, I think there's going to be a huge pile have a huge wreckage. None of this is rational in my mind. So that to go back to your earlier question preoccupies me, I hope it doesn't happen. But I mean, I fear as well. And if you look at the tensions, the geopolitical tensions in the world, and you look at them, historically, most of them are rooted, if not them all in resources, and how we allocate resources, you go back to the First World War to the Second World War, you go back to proceeding wars, the force over resources, which we're led to believe, are finite. And I think a lot of the global tension today is as much political and social and cultural, as is, as it is over resources. And I think we got to manage them properly. And I think we have to manage, therefore, our global debt and do something about it.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 6:04
Thank you. And I understand that fully, because the fact that that it means in the future, it has to be repaid, it's not sustainable to keep on adding more and more to it forever, is there is like, a limit where you stretch and beyond that things break. But just to present a counter argument to what you mentioned, I'm not saying this is what you believe in, that the resources are finite. In this world, there are experts on abundance. That's what they call themselves, saying that if you look throughout history, at every period, where humans faced a true shortage of resources, in the end, some new technology emerged that changed the world and added a bunch of new ability to use those resources or a new resource that replace the old one, etc. And therefore they say, the future is much more positive and better than you think, what is your belief about this?
John Aidan Byrne 7:06
First of all, I wish that that creative resource came today and was introduced into our global economy. First, I mean, let me just get get this out straight. I mean, by nature, I'm an optimist. And I believe I believe in that concept that we can have great discoveries. And we can offset a lot of our debt problems and how we're over consuming as you as it were, and you know, not dealing with these issues. I mean, you go back in recent history, there were many people and groups in the world during the 60s said, where the world was overpopulated. We would run out of food. And then we had the Malthusian School of Economics, which basically said we would cannibalize ourself, none of that came to pass. India, as one stark example, had the Green Revolution and it, you know, it produced an abundance of crops, and enough to feed itself. But I think that's sort of a separate issue. I think we're talking sort of in the present moment. I don't think what you're suggesting there and what what some of these analysts are talking about works in the, you know, in this short term, 12 month, two year period. And that's what I'm addressing here. I think longer term, yeah, which sure we'll we can deal with all of this and we can multiply our food production, we can multiply our energy resources, our who knows, we may end up having life on Mars somewhere, some of the human population will will set up habitats there. But in the short term, I think we have a real serious problem. It kind of reminds me that abundance School of theory about the concept of modern monetary or modern monetary theory MMT the idea that we can sort of multiply the money supply and somehow get out of any resulting inflation and problems that caused us economically. I don't see that working right now. I mean, now you hear people worrying about inflation, and how we're going to pay that down. Look at the price of gas at the pumps. And I guess dish Short answer is, we need to find something imminently. And I don't see that happening.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 10:05
Thank you I understand. So you believe and the next 12 months or so there is a big, big, big issue and problem both with the economy as well as probably by caused by the war between Russia and Ukraine and the shortage of green and all that. And that human beings are not aware of the dire consequences of everything that will converge together very soon into a very bad scenario. Is this correct?
John Aidan Byrne 10:36
Yeah, I think there's a huge imbalance between our resources and expectations and what we need to deal with. And I think, I think it's there's a high probability of more serious problems in the next 12 months, there's a heightened sense out there of risk and problems globally. I hope it doesn't happen. But and I hope the situation in Ukraine can be contained. I hope the recession is not as deep as it could possibly be. And it may turn out to be.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 11:09
Thank you. And since you're speaking to a lot of experts, analysts and all that, what do you believe or you think is being done right now, in order to mitigate or at least reduce the problem, and that we will face pretty soon with high probability?
John Aidan Byrne 11:30
Well, you just take the US example, the Federal Reserve has started to move interest rates up. And now it's talking about and has started to shrink its huge balance sheets, and let it back into that the Federal Reserve got into the idea of buying an awful lot of bonds to fuel the economy with liquidity. And now we have something in the region of 9 trillion on its balance sheet, and now it wants to taper dash. So the direct action that's coming out of Washington is twofold. In that sense. They're raising interest rates, and they're trying to reduce its $9 trillion balance sheet, which it which was the result of the COVID recession, if went into the economy during the height of COVID. And, and and pumped it up with liquidity. Now it's scaling that back. The question is, will it work? Will it work effectively, we'll have to wait and see. And at the same time, we know that Fed chair, Chairman Jerome Powell, has been talking a good game, and so has President Biden, in a sense, trying to talk down inflation, but and to speak to some evidence of that, but inflation was running pretty, quite hot in America over 8%. And we see that also across the globe. And we'll see if central bankers around the world will take a nod from what's happening here in the US in terms of monetary and at least in terms of monetary policy.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 13:17
Thank you. Some people might say, Well, I'm just a normal person, it won't affect me in many ways. Maybe I'll go off grid and live in the woods or whatever it is, or I live in a country that is distant from Wall Street itself and all that. So how will it impact the retail or normal person who is not investing into Wall Street and not doing anything that is directly impacted by the financial policy and the depth kind of implosion and all that?
John Aidan Byrne 13:55
Well, I think we see already how it's impacting mom and pops the retail investor, everyday workers, folks who don't work on Wall Street's middle class wage earners, poor wage earners are paying more at the stores for ordinary staples of goods. They're paying in the region of $5 a gallon for gas. We hear how much savings have been accumulated through the COVID period in bank accounts. The problem there now is that inflation is eroding the value of people's money. So people are much worse off today than they were a year ago. And there's great fear that not only will people go from living from paycheck to paycheck, but the impact of inflation longer term will plunge more people especially the poorer sector. Hands off our society into dire poverty. So it's not a good picture in that sense.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 15:06
Thank you. And since you're aware of it, why aren't decision makers and people who can and do have the authority to at least move things in the right direction? And with a big sway you Why aren't they taking those actions that could really make a big difference? Why do you think it's not happening as much as it could?
John Aidan Byrne 15:31
Well, I think they left it too late. And if you go back 24 months, or there abouts, when we had the outbreak of COVID, we all know that the global economy faced serious risk of plunging into the deepest recession, and outright depression. As big as anything we saw in the 1930s. Companies laid off people, people stayed at home. The economies globally, were on the verge of seizing, we had supply chain disruptions, and we still do. So central bankers around the world took immediate action, you could argue on both sides of this, whether everything they did was right or wrong. They flooded the global economies with liquidity, essentially, with cash. And here in America, and I believe in lots of European countries, they give direct payments to consumers, so that they would have enough money to buy food, clothing, and keep and keep their lives up and running. And essentially unemployment checks, and so that they could pay their mortgages. Now, of course, that money has to be paid back at some time. And the net impact of it, of course, has been inflationary. So arguably, the Fed and the government is taken action, at least in the United States, by raising interest rates. And by shrinking the Fed's balance sheet, the balance sheet, of course, been much of the accumulation of this liquidity that it flooded the US economy with to begin with. Are there other actions it could take? I I've been, probably are, but the scope is growing limited. Now, at the same time, it's fascinating to me that the economy, measured on other metrics is in great shape. I mean, we have close to full employment. And we can't find workers in America, and the same repeats itself, you know, in Europe and across the globe. So on one level, you have this kind of a dichotomy of full employment, the economy measured by certain metrics in great shape, and yes, yet we have this massive overhang of debt. The Federal Reserve debt is now over 30 trillion. The ability to keep up with that is questionable. So, I mean, yes, the government and the Fed are taking action, is it? Is it enough? Well, we'll have to wait and see.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 18:27
Thank you. And this makes me very curious about you. As you know, this is not financial podcast, and all that. For us. What is your story of being fascinated and so interested in finance, that you will dedicate a big part of your life and interest to it? How did it start? Where did you see the value and maybe someone listening through your same reasons could become even more interested in the financial sector and world? Or I guess the next next 12 months will force everybody to become interested, but for now, your story and reasons that moved you towards this interest?
John Aidan Byrne 19:13
Oh, that's a great question. And I'm flattered and delighted to to answer that. My career started in Ireland and in journalism. And I left Ireland over three decades ago, at the height of a very steep recession, and I came to Queens, New York, and my wife and I, and in some ways, we started again, from the very beginning. It wasn't easy at the at the start, and I, I always tell people, I got my first break, in a sense with the family of a very famous American Actor Carol O'Connor. They run an Irish American publication called the Irish advocate and I work for them briefly and then I work for them. Have other newspapers in New York, and ended up at McGraw Hill working for a financial publication called securities week. I got into that, in a sort of a curious way. I didn't have a massive background in finance and an economics still I had studied economics and business in Ireland. But I took that job and I was I ended up covering Wall Street and the trading markets and sort of my fascination in money grew from dad having sort of moved from Ireland to depths of a recession, come to live in Queens. And, you know, I kind of identify with you and that sense, you know, starting from the very beginning, I knew the value of money, and how hard it was, you know, to, we struggled, I guess, but then eventually, we got on top of things very much. When from McGraw Hill, and worked at several other financial publications, I ended up then, at a magazine called traders magazine where I was the editor for several years. That was a fun time. That was for the institutional investors, portfolio managers, institutional traders, technology professionals into trading markets. And then at the same time, I started to do a lot of writing for mainstream publications such as the New York Post business section, I still write for the New York Post, I've done a few pieces and for the Wall Street Journal, and multiple other publications, not all of us on finance, you know, contributed institutional investor, National Catholic register, various publications overseas, started a public startup, my podcast called dig life deep up there on Apple out of a fascination and a curiosity for not only economics, finance, but our social trends. And the existential crisis I see globally, which we kind of got into there. And then I started to work with Odeon Capital Group on their top rated audio and capital conversations as a whole store into Episode 20, with Dick Beauvais, and Matt Feldstein. And so that as well kind of heightened my fascination with business and finance, and of course, I, I came to Audient capital conversations with a background clearly, in covering business and finance and, and the podcast itself has just, you know, a deepened folder, my my, my intrigue, if you will, with this whole area of what's going on in the world. And in Wall Street. I suppose that sort of sums up to some degree, my background in that whole sector.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 23:23
Thank you. And for any listener, who wants to get educated on the on finance, on the whole socio economic possibilities and disasters, etc? What would you recommend as finding foundational education and the place to begin in order to understand what's going on and then, in addition, of course, to dig life deep, your podcasts and the conversations on audio on that you're speaking about?
John Aidan Byrne 23:55
Well, the one thing you got to remember about Wall Street, it's very heavy on terms and a certain amount of jargon, and and definitions and quite, quite hard to grasp concepts, but I would recommend several things. Obviously, listen to Audient capital conversations dig life deep. Get familiar with the stories and the content in the Wall Street Journal. Tune into the the finance shows on cable CNBC, Squawk Box, the morning talk shows, listen to business analysts, and get a couple of good primers on understanding Wall Street so at least you get some basics. And you'll get a grasp of the basics like what what is trading what is what is this Stock, what is a bond? You know, what is the Federal Reserve? What are interest rates? What does inflation mean? What does portfolio management mean? What does an IRA mean? And and if you have the opportunity, talk to your stockbroker if you have an account, or talk to your wealth manager, and they should walk you through a lot of these terms and make them a little more easily understandable.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 25:33
Thank you. That's fantastic. And if people want to listen to your podcast, can you share the links and I'll make sure to write them in the episode description.
John Aidan Byrne 25:43
Yep, you can listen to dig life deep. It's up there on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, all the good platforms. Same for Audient capital conversations. If anybody wants to reach me on social media, I'm on Twitter at John Aiden Byrne. I'm up there on Instagram at Jonathan burn. Dig life depose up on Facebook. I'm also have my own website at John Aiden Byrne. And I think I was happy to connect above also upon LinkedIn, I chatted and burn. Happy to have conversations with any of your listeners.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 26:24
Thank you so much. John Aiden Byrne, this was my privilege, my honor. It really enlightening conversation and I hope you know, whatever happens, it will be a wake up call to humanity to go on the right track. Thank you again.
John Aidan Byrne 26:42
Thank you for having me on your show. I really liked just
