#396 Chris Whalen: Warsh Has A Credibility Problem, Gold's Real Signal, & Your Annuity May Not Be Safe

In this episode of The Wrap with Chris Whalen, Chris joins Julia La Roche to argue that Kevin Warsh has a credibility problem: he's holding rates, avoiding confrontation with a divided board, and saying almost nothing, while the bond market does the tightening for him with the ten-year near 4.7% and mortgages headed toward seven-plus. Whalen's prescription is blunt — take back last year's cuts with two quarter-point hikes, consider a surprise August move, raise margin requirements, and keep shrinking the balance sheet, because Treasury is the dog and the Fed is barely the tail. From there the conversation ranges across a coming diesel and fertilizer shortage nobody in Washington will discuss, gold's role as real money in Asia versus a paper price in the West, and Whalen's own portfolio, from Annaly and Rhythm Capital to Flagstar and roughly a fifth in precious metals. The back half turns spicy with Tom Gober's new guest post on life insurers: private-credit-controlled annuity writers reinsuring liabilities offshore without posting enough assets behind them, hidden by state secrecy laws and rubber-stamped by ratings agencies that were never working for you. Plus PennyMac's bad quarter, George Gleason's construction-lending model at Bank OZK, and mailbag questions on SpaceX and mining stocks.

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Links:    

The Institutional Risk Analyst: https://www.theinstitutionalriskanalyst.com/ 

Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/rcwhalen    

Thomas Gober guest article: https://www.theinstitutionalriskanalyst.com/post/theira874

Seeing Around Corners book: https://www.theinstitutionalriskanalyst.com/product-page/seeing-around-corners-achieving-success-in-business-and-life-hardcover

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Timestamps:

0:00 — Intro: no, the show isn't being cancelled

1:52 — Warsh's first pressers: three dissenters and a chairman who says nothing

5:42 — How Warsh gets credibility: take back last year's cuts

7:20 — Trump stays quiet on Warsh — plus a coming diesel and fertilizer squeeze

8:46 — Is the economy finally slowing? The fading power of deficits

10:22 — "Treasury is the dog, the Fed is the tail"

11:30 — The case for a surprise August hike and less forward guidance

12:56 — Gold, Keith Weiner, and the permanent backwardation thesis

15:38 — Gold as bank capital: pledging metal as repo collateral

16:37 — Whalen's book: Annaly, Rhythm, miners, energy, Schwab, Flagstar

19:41 — PennyMac's ugly quarter and why it drags the whole mortgage group down

21:23 — Bank OZK vs. the big banks on commercial real estate

23:19 — Tom Gober's guest post: is your life insurer actually solvent?

27:00 — Offshore reinsurance, secrecy states, and why ratings won't save you

29:36 — Mailbag: SpaceX below IPO price — buy more or bail?

31:53 — Mailbag: miners vs. metal, GLD/GDX vs. SLV/SIL

35:13 — What's next: mortgage earnings, the bank 50, and the gold book