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 came in at 1.4%. Fine. Not great, but fine. Then they did the math — turns out it was really 0.7%. Half. Then this week, another revision. Now it's 0.5%. Less than half of the original number. From a quarter that ended four months ago.

Meanwhile, somewhere right now, someone is reading a headline about how the economy added 178,000 jobs in March and feeling great about it. Nobody's telling them we lost 140,000 in February. The frame of reference is everything, and whoever controls the frame controls the story.

Luke takes us through why GDP as a metric is already broken before you even get to the revision games — specifically the part where government spending counts as economic activity. The government doesn't make anything. Every dollar they spend, they extracted from you first. So counting that as "growth" is basically counting the hole they dug as part of the foundation.

Rob brings the accountability angle. There is none. These aren't people who get fired when they're off by 65% on a major economic indicator. They just update the spreadsheet and put out a new press release.

We also get into the Austrian economics bookshelf — Murray Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State, Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson, Hayek's Fatal Conceit — because once you understand why central planning is structurally incapable of processing economic information, the revision circus makes perfect sense. It was always going to look like this.

If you've been feeling like the economy the news describes doesn't match the economy you actually live in, this episode is for you. The data isn't broken. It's working exactly as intended — just not for you.

Free toolkit at PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast — Luke's book, video courses, and a community that reads the corrections.

Websites Referenced:

• perfectspiralcapital.com/podcast

• mises.org (Mises Institute — free Austrian economics audiobooks)

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 the red. And these seven companies, which make up roughly 30% of the entire index, are the main reason why.

If someone told you to just buy the index and forget about it, they owe you a phone call right now.

Luke walks us through why the AI-fueled growth propping up these companies was always shakier than it looked — junk-rated bonds funding data center deals that may never get built, promises of gigawatts of power with no land, no infrastructure, and no clear path to profitability. Disney just pulled a massive deal off the table. Nvidia circulated an internal memo to reassure people they're not the next Enron. That's not a good sign.

Rob adds the layer most people miss: when market value drops, that money doesn't vanish. It goes somewhere. Somebody is profiting on the way down, and it's almost never the average person who was told to trust the index.

We also dig into the word "growth" itself — one of the most abused terms in finance. Growth measured against what? A dollar that buys less every year? When inflation is the baseline, the bar for real growth is a lot higher than the headlines admit. This connects back to something we've said before: without a stable currency, you can't even trust the scorecard.

The show ends where it usually does — with a reminder that uncertainty is not a reason to panic, it's a reason to have a plan. If you want to know the strategies Luke and Rob actually use, the toolkit is at PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast.

Also worth checking out Rob's separate YouTube channel — Rob Brayton PSC — for deeper dives on a lot of this material.

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 revised down. The Fed is holding interest rates steady while everyone waits for cuts that aren't coming. And the job market? Only about 42% of new applicants are actually landing work. The mainstream financial press has a bold solution for all of this: maybe buy some government bonds. Luke, Rob, and I are not fans of that answer. What we actually dig into this episode is the history lesson most talking heads skip. Volcker raised rates to nearly 20% to "tame" the 1970s inflation — but the money printing never actually stopped. It was just covered up with pain. And here's the thing: that lever doesn't exist anymore. We're sitting on over $36 trillion in national debt. You can't Volcker your way out of that without the interest payments alone eating the country alive. The economic definitions themselves keep getting quietly updated, too. Inflation used to mean an increase in the money supply. Now it's whatever number fits neatly into this quarter's CPI basket. That's not math. That's marketing. What we keep coming back to — and I know it sounds like we say it every episode because we do — is that the people who are already operating outside the traditional market are watching all of this from a much more comfortable position. When markets are volatile and your neighbor's 401k is in freefall, the question isn't "how do I survive this?" It's "what can I buy right now?" That's what Infinite Banking builds. Not just protection. Options. If you've been on the fence about understanding how this stuff actually works, now's probably a good time to stop being on the fence. Luke's book, a couple of free video courses, and a real conversation — all of it's waiting for you at PerfectSpiralCapital.com/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 system. For reference, the entire US banking system, all assets included, is around $23 trillion.

That's not a rabbit hole. That's a canyon.

The analogy to 2008 isn't subtle. Mortgage-backed securities were the last time someone packaged up a bunch of garbage, slapped a rating on it, and called it a diversified asset. Now we've got leveraged loans being re-leveraged, private capital chasing yield because post-2008 regulations pushed it out of conventional markets, and all of it funneling into a tech sector that's already carrying more of the US economy than any one sector should.

Rob brings up a scenario that's been on my mind ever since he said it: what if a private credit collapse is the exact excuse needed to nationalize the financial system? You've seen this play before. Crisis happens, government swoops in, the people who caused the problem get bailed out, and you hold the bag. It's not paranoia; it's the historical record.

Berkshire Hathaway is sitting on more cash than ever. Warren Buffett isn't doing that because everything looks fine. He's doing that because when things go on sale, he wants to be the buyer, not the one selling at a loss. That's the whole game.

Speaking of which, GameStop. The moment retail investors got too close to seeing how the short machine actually works, the machine shut them down. The lesson wasn't "power to the people." The lesson was that the rules change when you start winning.

Your 401k is on autopilot, funneling money into this system every two weeks, helping inflate the very bubble that might eventually wipe it out. That's not an accident. That's the design.

If any of this sounds like reason to pay attention, start at PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast. Free toolkit, Luke's book, and a map out of this maze.

Referenced:

• PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast

• Rob Brayton PSC (YouTube channel)

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 destruction creates economic activity. Yes, technically. But every dollar funneled into Halliburton is a dollar that didn't go toward something durable, something generational, something actually useful. Rob makes the point that the best minds in academia get siphoned into defense industries because that's where the money is. What if that intellectual capital got redeployed into solving real problems instead? Luke breaks down why 1946, the year troops came home from World War II, was arguably the single greatest year for economic growth in U.S. history. Not because of government spending. Because private citizens came home, started companies, and got back to building wealth for themselves and their families. That's what actually drives an economy. We also get into the ethics of investing in defense contractors (Luke drops a technical point on how secondary market stock purchases actually work), the Pentagon's missing $1.8 trillion that apparently nobody can locate, and why DARPA's budget is basically a black hole with a government seal on it. The conclusion: war misallocates capital, destroys resources that could have compounded for generations, and benefits a very small group of people who are not you or me. If you want to protect yourself from the economic fallout of endless conflict, the answer isn't betting on Lockheed Martin, it's building your own financial infrastructure that governments and defense contracts can't touch. Your focus should stay where it belongs: your family, your community, the things you can actually control. Free toolkit with Luke's Amazon bestselling book and two video courses available at PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast. Websites Referenced:

• PerfectSpiralCapital.com/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 anyone's money in this space comes with any actual guarantees. This week, Luke, Rob, and I break down what happened with Blue Owl Capital, why it matters way beyond just one fund, and why this rhymes a little too loudly with 2008 for our comfort. What We Get Into:

• Blue Owl Capital halts investor redemptions, what actually happened and why
• Dark pools: the SEC-regulated trading environments where billions move without public reporting
• Why Carlisle Group, KKR, Blackstone, Aries, and Apollo are all moving in the same direction
• The term "SIFI," Systemically Important Financial Institutions, or as I call it, too big to fail with better branding
• How the private banking system is literally twice the size of all public-facing bank deposits worldwide
• Why 46% of one Blue Owl fund being in tech/software stock is a problem if you think the AI bubble might be getting a little puffy
• Infinite banking as the private contract alternative that actually guarantees your access to your money

The frustration here isn't just that one fund locked people out. It's that the system is designed so you don't get to know what's happening inside any of these black boxes until it's already affecting your money. Nobody reads their bank account agreement. Nobody understands that when you deposit money in a bank, legally, you're giving them a loan. The Dodd-Frank Act has some things to say about what happens to your money when things go sideways. We're not saying this is definitely 2008. We've heard that before and we're tired of crying wolf as much as anyone. What we are saying is that when it smells like something, it might be that thing. And when private institutions that promised liquidity start telling people they can't have their money back, it might be worth having a system where that can't happen to you. Free toolkit and Luke's Amazon bestselling book available at PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast. Referenced:

• PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast
• Reuters (Blue Owl Capital reporting)
• Dodd-Frank Act
• SEC (Securities Exchange Commission)

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 conference
• The difference between "planning for retirement" and planning five generations out
• David Stearns on Keynesian debt-based economics versus the Austrian individualist alternative
• How fractional reserve banking quietly siphons wealth upward while you're busy watching the market
• Why the infinite banking concept is a tool, not a moral statement, and why that matters
• Nelson Nash's number one rule: think long range, and what that actually looks like in practice
• How banks themselves use cash value life insurance as a tier-one asset (spoiler: they're not doing it for your benefit)
• Why accumulating capital changes the opportunities you see

Key Insights: Luke explains something that sounds simple but rewires how you think: when you accumulate capital, opportunities come to you. Most people aren't well-capitalized. They're not even thinking in those terms. The infinite banking concept gives you the framework to build that foundation, and the discipline to keep it. Rob drives home what David Stearns laid out at the think tank: the dominant economic system is Keynesian, which is a polished way of saying debt-based with top-down control. The Austrian alternative puts the individual in charge, you finance what you need through your own system, and you're the one who profits from it. Nobody here had to make any shady deals to get a seat at the table. That's kind of the whole point. The Bigger Picture: When banks hold trillions in cash value life insurance as their most stable asset, and you're still waiting for permission from the same institutions to access your own money, something's off. The infinite banking concept exists to fix that imbalance at the individual level. Nelson Nash's book, Becoming Your Own Banker, is still frequently a top-selling retirement book on Amazon. Short, readable, worth rereading every year. If you're working with Perfect Spiral Capital and you want to attend a future think tank, reach out to Luke or Rob. If you're not working with them yet, that's what the free toolkit is for. Websites Referenced:

• PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast
• Nelson Nash Institute (nelsonnashinstitute.com)

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 - cut rates to make numbers go up - without any concern for what that actually does to your purchasing power.

Luke and Rob break down the fundamental problem with our entire approach to monetary policy. The Fed shouldn't exist at all, but since it does, having someone who will just rubber-stamp whatever the president wants is even worse than having an independent incompetent.

Trump's economic philosophy seems to be "does that make number go up? Okay, let's do that." He's not an economist. He's the opposite of an economist. And now he's appointing someone who believes AI will magically solve all our inflation problems while simultaneously advocating for lower interest rates.

Has anyone noticed how much PC components cost lately? Has anyone looked at electricity prices? No? We're just gonna focus on this one metric and pat ourselves on the back?

Rob explained something that perfectly captures the absurdity: You can't support farmers without affecting auto workers. You can't prop up Wall Street without consequences for Main Street. Every intervention creates ripple effects across the entire economy. But Warsh and Trump don't care about that because they're only looking at one thing.

The silver lining, according to Luke, is that this doesn't really affect people who've positioned themselves outside the traditional banking system. When you're operating with properly structured whole life insurance through infinite banking, you're not worried about what the Fed does with interest rates. You have consistent, reliable compounding growth regardless of their manipulation.

Luke uses his policy primarily for income taxes and insurance premiums. Rob finances everything from property taxes to Bitcoin purchases through his system. They're capturing transactions within their own banking system instead of begging some institution for permission every time they need capital.

That's the mindset shift that changes everything. The Fed is gonna do what the Fed is gonna do. You can either spend your time worrying about Kevin Warsh's appointments and Jerome Powell's decisions, or you can build systems that work regardless of their incompetence.

We're living in this weird situation where the US economy looks like a jalopy, but when every other country has two broken legs, being the kid with just a broken arm isn't so bad.

Ready to build your own economic foundation that doesn't depend on Fed chairs making good decisions? Check out PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast for their free toolkit.

Websites Referenced:

• PerfectSpiralCapital.com/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 million for silver price manipulation (and still made a profit)
• Japan's yen carry trade unwinding and what happens when free money disappears
• The difference between gold as insurance versus gold as speculation
• Why selling gold at all-time highs just gives you more worthless dollars
• Nvidia's 14% dominance of the S&P 500 and what that means for market stability

Key Insights: Rob breaks down something most people miss about precious metals. Gold and silver aren't investment vehicles - they're insurance against currency debasement. The price going up doesn't mean gold's worth more. It means the dollar's worth less. Luke returns after missing a few episodes with perspective on the carry trade situation. When institutional investors can borrow Japanese yen at essentially 0% and invest it in US bonds at 3%, that's easy money. But when the Bank of Japan raises rates even a quarter point above zero, those entire schemes unwind. And who gets hurt? Not the institutions. The Basel III discussion reveals why global banks are suddenly loading up on physical gold. Banking regulations now classify physical precious metals as tier one assets that can be leveraged at full value. Paper gold and silver? Penalized. So institutions are unwinding paper positions and taking physical delivery. The Reality Check: When I see gold and silver both ripping higher, my first thought isn't "time to buy precious metals." It's "what's happening to my dollar that both of these are moving?" Rob emphasizes this perfectly: You don't think of precious metals in dollar terms. You think of them as stores of value. So when the "price" goes up, that's just the mirror reflecting currency erosion. Luke shares something that stuck with me - if you sell your gold right now at these highs, you just have a lot of dollars. Which are going down in value. That's the whole reason gold went up in the first place. Perfect Spiral Capital Insight: Rob's been researching the M2 money supply, banking regulations, and institutional movements. Every dollar being printed deflates every other dollar already out there. That's math, not opinion. Luke points out we don't have the influence to move markets. You, me, everyone I've ever met could form a club and all buy or sell gold simultaneously. We still wouldn't move the price. But when Citi, Chase, and global institutions shift their asset allocations into physical precious metals? That moves prices. The conversation ends with a sobering thought about AI speculation and Nvidia's market dominance. If that bubble pops, we're not talking about a 10% correction. We're talking potential depression territory given how heavily invested major companies are. But here's the empowering part: Once you understand these patterns, you stop reacting emotionally to price movements and start positioning for what's actually happening. Websites Referenced:

• PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast

Trump's team announced you might be able to raid your 401k for a down payment on a house. Sounds like IBC at first glance, right? Not even close. Welcome to Between The Lies, where Rob Brayton from Perfect Spiral Capital helps me understand why government solutions to government-created problems always make things worse. This week we're tackling Kevin Hassett's proposal to let people withdraw 401k funds for home purchases, and why it's actually a desperation play disguised as help. What We Cover:

• Why withdrawing from your 401k kills your future earning capacity permanently
• The fundamental difference between removing capital and borrowing against capital with IBC
• How 401ks are a government solution to a government-created problem (taxation)
• The retirement myth: Why this modern concept might die with the boomers
• Sound money solutions versus endless government interventions
• Why housing unaffordability traces back to monetary policy, not down payment access
• Boomer home equity: What happens when the largest generation exits the market
• The political impossibility of real housing solutions

Key Insights: Rob breaks down the mechanics most people miss. With 401k withdrawals, you're permanently removing capital that was compounding for your future. With infinite banking, you're borrowing the insurance company's money against your cash value while your policy continues earning. Same surface idea, completely different outcomes. We also tackle the uncomfortable truth: Trump knows how to fix housing. Every administration does. They won't do it because the real fix wipes out boomer home equity, which is where most Americans store their net worth. No politician will run on "your parents' house is worth less now." The conversation gets philosophical when we challenge the retirement concept itself. This idea of a permanent vacation after 65 barely existed before boomers. The statistics on people dying shortly after retirement because they have nothing to live for are sobering. Maybe the whole framework is broken. The Silver Lining: Henry Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson" reminds us these patterns repeat because people keep expecting different results from the same interventions. Once you understand the game, you stop playing by their rules and start building systems they can't touch. Rob emphasizes creating stable assets in your own portfolio that allow you to weather whatever storm comes. Whether housing crashes or inflates further, the goal is coming out the other side with something rather than hoping politicians make the right calls. Perfect Spiral Capital Insight: When your 401k is the only tool they give you, of course people will use it for immediate needs. The alternative is building systems where capital is always accessible without destroying future compounding. That's what infinite banking provides that government programs never will. Ready to build real wealth instead of raiding retirement accounts? Visit PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast for the free toolkit. Websites Referenced:

• PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast
• Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt (recommended reading)
• Becoming Your Own Banker by Nelson Nash (referenced)