Yes, we are experiencing prolonged war, persistent inflation, 18% of our taxes go to pay only the interest on 40t in debt, long-rates are breaking 5%... but why all the pessimism?

In my latest podcast, Through the Noise, with Robert Olinger, I dare to focus on the positives. 

1. Unemployment is low and there is no sign it is set to jump. The AI jobpocalypse is increasingly unlikely. New opportunities continue to outpace displacement.

2.Inflation is annoyingly high at 3.4%. However, it is hardly a crisis. The breakeven 10-year inflation is 2.4% - somewhat above the Fed target.

3.Real wages have kept pace with inflation

4.A long rate of 5% is historically, no big deal. A normal yield curve will have a premium of a few percent over short rates. Indeed, it is the rate that we had 20 years ago. What was unusual was the very low long rates.  Crucially, the rate has increased but this is due to increases in the expected real rate - not inflation. Indeed, breakeven 10-year inflation has not increased over the past 12 months. Higher expected real rates may be an indication of higher growth opportunities. 

5. Growth opportunities have increased. We have four technological revolutions happening simultaneously - that has never happened before - with AI opportunities leading the charge. GDP growth averaged a tepid 1.7% in the first two quarters. The Atlanta Fed is projecting 4.4% in the third quarter. The key issue is whether 10% is possible in the near future.  

6. The stock market is near all-time highs. Yes, the stock market has been wrong many times before. However, this is not 1929. One obvious difference was the lack of technological innovations in 1929. Furthermore, it is not 1999. At that time, there was one technological innovation - the internet - with a much smaller potential to impact GDP. 

To me, pessimism is overwhelmed by the case for optimism.

This is not to say there is no risk. There is plenty of risk. Historically, every great innovation has downsides. With AI, the scale of the upside potential is vast - and the downside potentially existential. The best approach is to manage the risk, not seek to eliminate it.

In this episode of *Through the Noise*, Cam Harvey and Robert Olinger examine the debate surrounding Federal Reserve interest rate policy and challenge the conventional narrative about rising Treasury yields.

Harvey explains why the Federal Reserve has much more influence over short-term interest rates than long-term rates—and why the market’s focus on a potential 25-basis-point move may distract from the bigger economic story.

The discussion explores how long-term interest rates affect corporate investment decisions, why inflation expectations may not explain the recent rise in yields, and what credit spreads and massive financing for AI data centers reveal about capital markets.

Harvey offers an alternative interpretation: higher real yields may reflect investor expectations for stronger real economic growth. With companies making major investments in artificial intelligence infrastructure and data centers, rising long-term rates could be signaling accelerating productivity and economic growth rather than economic weakness.

Instead of viewing higher long-term interest rates strictly as bad news, Harvey argues that markets may be pricing in robust growth opportunities as the economic impact of AI innovation begins to emerge.

Take the AI literacy test. No cheating with AI! 

How many of these terms do you know: RSI, FLOPS, TTC, ASI, GAN, HAL, CAISI, CoT, FLOPs?

What about GPT? Over a billion users of ChatGPT every day and very few of them can say what GPT stands for without looking it up. 

Time's up. Pencils down. Let's dig in as I explore how AI went off the rails and got caught cheating with AI.

The average investor was excluded from the explosive upside when SpaceX was a private company. That upside was reaped by “accredited” investors The average investor is largely excluded from the IPO allotment - a few crumbs were thrown. Now, the average investor is faced with investing at $170. Academic studies show that the long-term returns of IPOs in excess of reasonable benchmarks like the S&P are modest - or non-existent.

In this episode of Through the Noise, Cam Harvey unpacks one of finance's most consequential and least understood rules: who counts as a "qualified investor." In the US, the label has nothing to do with knowledge or credentials. It comes down to wealth. Cam traces the rule to the 1929 crash and the Securities Act of 1933, explains why its costly disclosure regime made sense then, and argues that it now locks ordinary people out of the highest-return investments, from SpaceX to OpenAI to Anthropic. With information cheaper and more abundant than ever, he makes the case for a lighter, intermediate tier of disclosure that would let far more investors participate early, diversify properly, and share in the companies shaping the future.

A $1.75 trillion IPO is about to hit the market, and the mechanics behind it could leave retail investors holding the bag. In this episode of Through the Noise, Cam Harvey breaks down how SpaceX's Nasdaq debut triggers a wave of forced index-fund rebalancing, and why recently waived listing rules amplify the distortion. With only 4% of shares trading freely, a little-known Nasdaq provision counts SpaceX at three times that weight, pushing demand and the price artificially higher. Drawing on his research into the unintended consequences of rebalancing, Cam explains why the spike is only temporary, how the correction unfolds, and the asymmetric information gap that leaves everyday investors dangerously exposed. If you are tempted to buy into the hype, understand the mechanics first.

In this episode of Through the Noise, Cam Harvey unpacks his newly published Financial Analysts Journal paper, "Fundamental Growth," and applies its lessons to the most anticipated IPO of the year: SpaceX. Cam explains why traditional value and growth indices misclassify stocks, leaving investors exposed to expensive, low-growth names. He then turns to the mechanics of the SpaceX offering, a $1.75 trillion market cap with only 4 percent float, and reveals how accelerated inclusion rules at Nasdaq, S&P, and Russell will force passive funds to chase a tiny pool of shares. The result is a predictable price surge that benefits insiders while leaving retail investors holding the bag. A timely, analytic-driven look at the structural forces shaping modern markets.

In this episode of Through the Noise, Cam Harvey returns to dive deeper into the rapidly expanding stablecoin landscape. Building on the previous discussion of Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC), Cam unpacks USD1 - the World Liberty Financial stablecoin connected to the Trump family. He explores why nearly every major financial institution is launching a stablecoin, the critical distinction between centralized and decentralized tokens, and the long history of family conflicts of interest in politics from Billy Carter to Hunter Biden. The conversation then turns to the Justin Sun lawsuit involving 800 million locked WLF governance tokens, the surprising 60% Trump-family voting control, and the 75% revenue split flowing to a related entity. 

While bitcoin and dogecoin grab headlines, a far less flashy corner of crypto has quietly overtaken Visa and Mastercard in annual transaction volume. In this episode of Through the Noise, Cam Harvey walks Robert Olinger through stablecoins - dollar-pegged tokens that settle in seconds for pennies instead of days for dollars. Cam unpacks how Circle's USDC actually works, why the model is structurally safer than fractional-reserve banking, and how the GENIUS Act now puts token holders first in line if an issuer fails. He revisits the brief 2023 USDC depeg tied to Silicon Valley Bank, explains why Tether earns a staggering $33 million in profit per employee, and lays out the brewing fight over the Clarity Act - where stablecoin issuers want to pay interest, and the bank lobby is fighting hard to stop them.

Why does your savings account earn essentially zero while money market funds pay nearly 4%? In this episode of Through the Noise, host Robert Ollinger sits down with Duke finance professor Cam Harvey to unpack the massive gap between bank deposit rates and market yields - and why giants like Chase pay just 0.01% APR on savings deposits. Harvey explains how large banks exploit market power to maximize their funding spread at the expense of smaller depositors, then lays out four powerful forces disrupting traditional banking: fintech, private credit, stablecoins, and AI. The conversation turns to regulatory failures from the global financial crisis to Silicon Valley Bank, the case for narrow banks, and why the Clarity Act's stablecoin interest provisions could transform the entire financial system.