Market Manipulation Exposed: Why Record Highs Don't Mean Economic Health | Between The Lies 007
Release Date: 09/19/2025
Palantir, Tencent, and the Architecture of Financial Surveillance: The X Money Episode | Between The Lies 033
Between the Lies Podcast
Remember when The Circle came out and everyone kind of laughed it off? A social media company that just… becomes the government? Cute little dystopian fiction. Yeah. Elon Musk is pushing X toward full "everything app" status, payments, savings accounts, a Visa partnership, money on deposit. It's being sold as convenience. And it probably will be convenient. That's kind of the problem. This week Luke, Rob, and I dug into what happens when you let a single platform own your financial life. We used WeChat as our case study, a billion-plus users in China, integrated payments, location data,...
info_outline
They All Buried It! Q4 GDP Revisions Prove Again Economic Data Is Political Theater | Between The Lies 032
Between the Lies Podcast
There's a move they run every single quarter and it works every time. Some government agency throws out an economic number. It's good. It makes the front page. The world moves on. Then a month later, quietly, that number gets revised down. Then revised again. And by the time the truth shows up, it's page 63 of a policy wonk newsletter that three people read. This week on Between The Lies, Luke, Rob, and I dig into exactly that playbook — specifically the Q4 GDP revision that is honestly a masterclass in "trust me bro" economics. Here's what happened: The advance estimate for Q4 GDP growth...
info_outline
Microsoft, Tesla, and the Magnificent Seven: When "Just Buy the Index" Goes Wrong | Between The Lies 031
Between the Lies Podcast
They gave it a name. A fancy, Hollywood-sounding name. The Magnificent Seven. Once again reality does it's level best to ape fiction. Welcome back to Between The Lies. I'm Nicky P, here with Luke Tatum and Rob Brayton from Perfect Spiral Capital, and this week we're talking about the seven largest stocks in the S&P 500 — Microsoft, Meta, Tesla, Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon, and Apple — and why every single one of them is down on the year as of late March 2026. Some of them significantly. Tesla is down 26%. Microsoft is down 15%. The S&P 500 as a whole is sitting at a little over 9% in...
info_outline
CNBC Says: Buy Government Bonds, Stagflation Eats Your Savings | Between The Lies 030
Between the Lies Podcast
You've probably been hearing the word "stagflation" thrown around a lot lately and thinking — I have no idea what that means. Don't worry. Neither did I exactly. So I asked my experts. Short version: prices go up, jobs disappear, and the economy stops growing. All at the same time. Fun stuff. The reason this word keeps popping up right now is that we're already living in an economy that's been feeling off for a while — and a few nasty ingredients are coming together at once. Oil prices are up around 40% thanks to ongoing conflict in the Middle East. GDP growth just got...
info_outline
Smart Money vs. Dumb Money: What Berkshire Hathaway Knows That Your 401k Doesn't | Between The Lies 029
Between the Lies Podcast
You know that feeling when you're watching a movie and you already know exactly how it ends, but you can't look away anyway? That's basically every episode of this show. And Episode 029 is no different. We're talking about private credit — the $2 to $3.5 trillion shadow lending market that most people have never heard of. Stack on private equity (another $8-10 trillion globally), then add in the insurance assets that have been quietly wired into this whole apparatus (another $7-9 trillion), and you're looking at roughly $20 trillion of exposure sitting just outside the regular banking...
info_outline
What War Does To Your Wallet That The TV Won't Tell You | Between The Lies 028
Between the Lies Podcast
War. Who is it good for? If you answered "Raytheon shareholders and K Street lobbyists," congratulations — you're paying attention. This week on Between The Lies, Luke Tatum, Rob Brayton, and I dug into the economics of war and why the "war is good for the economy" argument is one of the most persistent lies in mainstream financial thinking. With another Middle Eastern conflict dominating headlines and defense stocks ticking up, it felt like the right moment to pull back the curtain. What We Cover: We start with Frederic Bastiat's broken window fallacy — the idea that...
info_outline
$1.8 Trillion in Private Credit Just Blinked: What Blue Owl Capital's Freeze Means for Your Money | Between The Lies 027
Between the Lies Podcast
Blue Owl Capital just told its investors "just kidding" about being able to get their money back. If you missed it, they halted redemptions on their private equity shares. Permanently. As in, you thought that was your money, but it turns out it was their money the whole time. Welcome to the world of non-depository financial institutions — what Luke calls NDFIs, what we call No Diffys. These are the places where an absolutely enormous amount of money lives that isn't sitting in any bank you've ever walked into. We're talking $1.8 trillion in private credit alone. And very little of...
info_outline
The IBC Mindset: Multi-Generational Wealth Without Epstein's Island | Between The Lies 026
Between the Lies Podcast
Rob spent the weekend with some of the sharpest long-range thinkers in finance and came back with something worth unpacking. Welcome to Between The Lies, where Luke Tatum and Rob Brayton from Perfect Spiral Capital help me make sense of a world that keeps trying to pick your pocket while telling you it's doing you a favor. This week, Rob attended the annual Nelson Nash Institute Think Tank for the second time, and the theme hit different: think long range. What We Cover: What actually happens at the Nelson Nash Institute Think Tank and why it's nothing like a normal financial...
info_outline
Kevin Warsh Fed Chair Appointment: Morgan Stanley's Yes Man for Trump's Rate Cuts | Between The Lies 025
Between the Lies Podcast
As we prepare for the Fed to change leadership, I'm reminded that Trump might be the worst person in the world at making political appointments. Welcome to Episode 025 of Between The Lies, where Luke Tatum and Rob Brayton from Perfect Spiral Capital help me understand why Kevin Warsh - Trump's likely pick to replace Jerome Powell as Fed Chair - represents everything wrong with our monetary system. Here's what bothers me most about this whole situation: Warsh is as conventional and Morgan Stanley as you can possibly get. He's the definition of a yes man who will do exactly what Trump wants -...
info_outline
Gold and Silver All-Time Highs Signal Dollar Debasement: Sound Money V The Fed | Between The Lies 024
Between the Lies Podcast
Silver and gold going up simultaneously should tell you something about your dollar. Nothing good to my mind. Welcome to Between The Lies, where Luke Tatum and Rob Brayton from Perfect Spiral Capital help me understand what it means when precious metals hit all-time highs while everyone's celebrating stock market records. Spoiler: It's not about gold getting more valuable. What We Cover: Gresham's Law explained: Bad money drives out good money Basel III banking regulations forcing banks to hold physical gold/silver as tier one assets Why JPMorgan Chase paid $920...
info_outline