The Zach Foust Show

The Zach Foust Show

By Zachary Foust

We break down housing, growing wealth gaps, and the economy in a simple, meaningful way.


Clear, honest, and structured for real people.


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Best of The Zach Foust Show

The most played episodes among Podcast App listeners.

  1. Number 1: Gas & diesel prices just SOARED, what happens now??? | ZFS 104

    Send us Fan Mail Gas is at $4.44 nationally, up nearly 50% since this war started in February. Diesel just hit a record $6.40, up 77 cents in the first two weeks of September alone. In California diesel is already at $8 a gallon. Sean, Joe and I break down exactly why this is happening and why I do not think it comes back down anytime soon. Here is what most coverage misses. Crude oil is not the story. Diesel is. Diesel is the single most universal tangible input in the American economy, it moves your groceries, your packages, your construction materials, everything. And the reason diesel and gasoline are climbing faster than crude is that refined fuel is explosive, so almost nobody is lining up to haul it through the Strait of Hormuz right now. Freight captain crews have gone up eight times in cost because of the risk. Ukraine keeps hitting Russian refineries. Exxon just shut down its Joliet plant entirely after a power outage. Refining capacity is disappearing while demand keeps going. Then there is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. We peaked at 726 million barrels in 2009. We were at 415 million as recently as March. We are now around 285 million, the lowest level since 1983. Under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act there is a hard legal floor at 252.4 million barrels, below which the president cannot do routine drawdowns without declaring a national energy emergency. We are getting very close to that number. And we close on China. Their crude imports collapsed when this war began, which quietly kept global prices from spiking even harder. Now those imports are ticking back up. Whether that is pure economics or something more strategic, the result is the same. Supply comes off an already tight market. If you have not filled your heating oil tank for winter, I would do it now. Support the show

    1h 21min
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  2. Number 2: They Are Buying Their Own Debt Now | ZFS 101

    Send us Fan Mail Episode 101. Sean is back on the boards, healthy and happy, and we are digging into the trickery happening over at the Treasury and the impossible position the Federal Reserve has put itself in. Here is the setup. The July Treasury statement shows $334 billion came in and $766 billion went out. That is more than double. A $432 billion deficit in a single month. Scott Bessent's answer is that we will grow our way out of it, mostly through tariff revenue. So we ran the math. Our GDP grew 2.9% in 2023 while our debt grew 7.2%. In 2024 it was 2.8% growth against 6.9% debt. In 2025, 2.1% against 6.1%. Our debt is growing two to three times faster than our economy. Monkey no believe that. Then it gets worse. Nobody wants our long term debt, so the Treasury announced it is doubling its own bond buybacks and may tap nearly a trillion dollars from the Treasury General Account to do it. That is manufactured demand. We are buying our own debt to suppress our own yields. One analyst called it the world's largest interest only adjustable rate mortgage, and the adjustment dates come every 28 days. Meanwhile Kevin Warsh is sitting at the Fed with two mandates and no way to hit both. Raise rates and you kill the job market that already has 5.6% unemployment for college grads under 30. Cut rates and inflation, already at 3.7% on PCE, runs away from you. If they hike they lose the long end. If they cut they lose the long end. That is the whole game. I close with Trump saying out loud that the ultimate intervention is our military, Smotrich openly laying out the expansion plan, and the Las Vegas bio lab charges quietly getting dropped. Own an asset or get left behind. Support the show

    1h 16min
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  3. Number 3: This State has a HUGE problem w/ Michael Smith | ZFS 105

    Send us Fan Mail Delaware has a problem and it comes down to three things. Housing, jobs, and retirement. Today I break all three down and then sit with Michael Smith, Democrat candidate for Delaware State Treasurer, to ask him what he actually plans to do about it. Here is where we are. Bloomberg just named Delaware the rising number one retirement state in the country and nobody told the people who already live here. Sussex County population is up 17% since 2020, growing five times faster than the US average. The median homebuyer in southern Delaware is now 54.5 years old. Since 2019 the median household income in Kent County went up about 19.6% while the median home price went up 96%. That math does not work for anybody trying to start a life here. On jobs, Delaware sits at 4.8% unemployment while the national number is 4.1%. Before Covid we were around 3.7%, better than the country. Now we are worse. And a huge share of the jobs Delawareans hold are not even sourced in Delaware, they are remote positions based in Philly, DC, Baltimore, or Jersey. The money comes in, but the economic value is not being built here. Then there is education. We are ninth in the nation in per pupil spending at about $22,000 per student, and 45th in educational outcomes. Top 20% in spend, bottom 10% in results. That is money flowing out with nothing coming back. Retirees are moving in because Delaware is cheap compared to Jersey and New York, our property taxes are among the lowest five in the nation, and the beaches are right there. Meanwhile the traffic has doubled since 1999, the primary care shortage is real, and nobody is building the infrastructure to keep up. Michael Smith is an economist. If he is going to be in charge of our money, I want to know what he is actually going to do with it. Stick around for the full interview. Support the show

    1h 36min
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  4. Number 4: The Buyers are GONE...What Happens Next? | ZFS 103

    Send us Fan Mail The buyers are gone. Not just in housing, not just in cars, everywhere, across every major purchase in this country and honestly across the globe. Sean, Joe and I dig into why, and it all comes back to the same place. We start with the August jobs report. 162,000 jobs created, way above expectations, with June and July both revised upward by a combined 55,000 jobs. Sounds great, right? Except the stock market fell and bond yields went up the second the number dropped. That tells you the market does not believe it. We walk through Kevin Walsh's Jackson Hole speech, his strange opening story, and why he used the word hike four times in his first minute and a half. We also break down the actual composition of those new jobs, mostly food service, bartending, and teaching, not exactly the export driven growth that builds a stronger economy. And we ask the obvious question nobody wants to say out loud. What if these numbers are being managed right before the midterms? Then we get into why buying and borrowing have both gotten more expensive at the same time. The 30 year Treasury is sitting at 5.24%, up from 4.63% before the war. The ten year is at 4.79%, up from 3.96% pre war. That is what is actually driving your mortgage rate and your car payment, not just inflation on the sticker price. We close with an update on Iran, who has rejected the latest peace proposal and is still demanding the exact same terms they started with, $300 billion, an end to sanctions, and peace for their allies. They are playing the long game, and the Fed is walking straight into a catch 22 it cannot solve. Something cracks, then we print, then it inflates. Again. I am not a financial advisor, I am a real estate agent, but here is what I personally hold. 25% crypto, mostly Bitcoin. 50% gold and silver as my insurance policy against the dollar. 25% in the S&P 500. Hold an asset or get left behind. Support the show

    1h 16min
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  5. Number 5: Will Housing Ever Become Affordable? | ZFS 102

    Send us Fan Mail Will housing ever become affordable? Sean, Joe and I dig into what it would actually take for home prices to come down, and why the answer is a lot more complicated than everyone screaming crash on TikTok wants it to be. We start with the number that should stop you cold. The qualifying income for a starter home in America right now is $103,584 a year. That is just to get your foot in the door. Then we play a clip of Trump saying he does not want housing prices to come down because he wants to protect the wealth of homeowners who already own. The same guy who campaigned on driving prices down is now on camera saying the opposite. I walk through the three rules that have preceded every housing crash in history. Low demand and high supply, which we do not have right now. Jobs failing first, which has not happened yet. And money printing as the government's inevitable response once something does crack. We debunk a viral bank teller story with zero sourcing, we look at real delinquency data instead of vibes, and we dig into the silver tsunami theory, whether boomers dying off over the next decade will actually flood the market with affordable supply, or whether it just leaves empty McMansions in retirement towns nobody under 40 wants to live in. Bottom line, I do not think this ends in a crash. I think it ends in more printing, prices grinding back up, and wages continuing to lose the race. The real problem was never housing. It is money printing and wages that never caught up. We are now shooting twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays, live here on YouTube, and available on Spotify and Apple right after. Support the show

    1h 29min
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The podcast currently has 118 episodes available.