Title: Chris Whalen: Age of Uncertainty — Falling Home Prices, Cracks in Private Credit & a Sidelined Fed Show: The Julia La Roche Show — "The Wrap with Chris Whalen" (weekly segment), host Julia La Roche Guest: Chris Whalen — Chairman, Whalen Global Advisors; author of The Institutional Risk Analyst blog Date: 2026-09-19 (YouTube publish date) URL: https://youtu.be/741FBFc2vh0 Length: 33:42 Note: YouTube auto-transcript pasted by Stephen. Fillers (um/uh/you know) and stutters removed; wording otherwise verbatim. Caption name mangles corrected: "Chris Whan"=Chris Whalen, "Whan Global"=Whalen Global, "the rap"=The Wrap, "Kevin Worsh/Walsh"=Kevin Warsh, "Scott Besson"=Scott Bessent, "John Daisard/Daizard/Daard"=John Dizard, "Jeffrey Gunlock"=Jeffrey Gundlach, "trip 7"=777 (777 Partners), "Annalie/Analy/Italy"=Annaly, "Rhythm Capital"=Rithm Capital, "Lad Brooks"=Ladbrokes, "monetary medals"=Monetary Metals (sponsor), "Bear Sterns"=Bear Stearns. "David Co talk" kept as captioned. Sponsor reads (Monetary Metals, 09:17-10:30) and subscribe ask 23:43 retained for timestamp continuity.
00:00 How can the Fed even talk about a 2% inflation target when we're doing a deficit each year that's 6% of GDP or more? And the Fed still, Kevin Warsh, the rest of the people at the Fed still do not want to do what they need to do, which is to lecture Congress and say, "Hey, we need to have a smaller deficit.
00:26 >> [music] >> Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of The Wrap with Chris Whalen where we break down what's happening on Wall Street, Washington DC, and everywhere in between. Chris, great to see you. >> Nice to see you, Julia. >> Well, I wish we were together in New York, but it didn't quite line up this time, but at some point we'll have to do another in-person episode, but I'm in studio today.
00:53 >> Yeah. All right. Before we get into the episode, I got to give a quick shout out to our partners over at Monetary Metals. You guys can go to monetary-metals.com/thewrap to learn more, and we certainly appreciate their support. All right, Chris, now that we're back in the swing of things, we just had the FOMC a 25 basis point hike, which you expected when we spoke last week.
01:18 Oil still above $100 a barrel. We saw the 10-year hover above five. The new normal, if you will. Let's just start with your big picture reaction to this week and the hike. >> Well, first off, the Fed had to do something where they would have been completely irrelevant. There's not much the Fed can do about the inflation we're facing.
01:41 However, we're actually doing an interview with John Dizard this afternoon to catch up on energy and everybody has discovered the energy crisis now. We're all talking about it. But the Fed could have raised rates, the target for Fed funds, a point and it wouldn't really matter, especially to the long end of the yield curve.
02:01 So, I think this was mostly about them catching up to the narrative, if you will. But in a longer term sense, Julia, what we're seeing here is kind of a reset from 15 years of Fed action in the bond market where they pushed down interest rates to very low levels and people got used to that. But I can tell you in the housing sector, we're going to see death and destruction this year and next.
02:26 Companies are going to go out of business. We're going to see higher default rates and it's going to be a return to normal. But because inflation is going to be persistent, the Fed may not be able to ride to the rescue as they have in the past. And this is something I've been focusing a lot on with my clients and with people in the industry.
02:46 I did a discussion yesterday with Rob Chrisman who is the scribe of residential mortgages. He's a great guy. And I said, "Look, we may not see lower rates, so you've got to get used to this." And that's going to be a tough adjustment. >> As you point out, it's like that reset after 15 years getting back to a new normal that a lot of us >> Seven is not that high in historical terms, but in relative terms, looking back since the great financial crisis, it is quite high.
03:16 And it is causing huge stress in private equity and private credit. >> Mhm. Well, we know that Warsh has acknowledged that inflation is too high, but do you think that his kind of focus on inflation is kind of pointless or it's not really going to do much? >> Well, rhetorically, he's not out there trying to turn the tide, if you will, in terms of perception.
03:43 So, I think the market is going to continue to do what it's doing, which is that we see higher rates. However, spreads have been coming in, which is the difference between corporate bond yields for example and treasury yields. That indicates that people are buying paper. In other words, the dogs are still hungry. They want assets.
04:02 However, there is also an issue if you can't go out and raise money. There are a lot of sectors right now in the non-bank space, private equity portfolio companies, mortgage companies who are having a hard time raising money, and that's going to have a big impact as we go forward. >> Mhm. On the rate hike, I think in one of your notes you called it pretty lame.
04:28 What do you think they should have done? Do you think they should have gone like 50 basis points, gone bigger? >> I mean, yes and no. The actual rate increase is not going to do much for inflation. Inflation is going to continue to rise. Oil prices are going to stay high, if not go higher. Diesel fuel, all the things we talked about, are going to go higher.
04:52 And I think for that reason, it's mostly a symbolic gesture on the part of the Fed. They're making the economists happy. But I think we have a large crowd of people, Julia, who are still looking at monetary policy and inflation with the tools of the 1980s. And they don't realize that the large deficit, $2 trillion a year, come on.
05:16 That is the defining factor right now. What the Fed does is almost irrelevant. >> Yeah. >> So, how can the Fed even talk about a 2% inflation target when we're doing a deficit each year that's 6% of GDP or more? >> And the Fed still, Kevin Warsh, the rest of the people at the Fed still do not want to do what they need to do, which is to lecture Congress and say, "Hey, we need to have a smaller deficit.
05:42 " Donald Trump is completely AWOL when it comes to fiscal issues. He's living in a different parallel universe. And that's reflected in the bond market. When the bond market hears and sees the behavior coming from Trump, coming from Scott Bessent, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense, they react negatively. Right. Very [snorts] simple.
06:04 >> Yeah. As you write, we think the 25 basis point hike is pretty lame. Who cares when you have a $2 trillion deficit? So [laughter] I guess the question, Chris, is the FOMC even relevant when you have a $2 trillion deficit? Can they actually do anything or they can't even fight the fiscal policy? >> No, they can't.
06:25 And the Fed is the dog, or excuse me, the Treasury is the dog. The Fed is the tail. It used to be that when the Fed made policy changes, they had immediate and significant impact on markets. Now people are looking at the Treasury to see what the refunding is going to be, and they are the biggest borrower in the market today by far.
06:48 So when you look at that you say to yourself, well, does the central bank even matter? And the answer is only if they were to restart quantitative easing and start buying securities, which eventually they will have to do. You're gonna see the Fed monetizing the federal debt because they're not gonna have any choice and then this discussion about inflation is going to be just dispensed with entirely.
07:08 >> Do you think that there's even interest in QE from Warsh? >> No. No, he doesn't want to do that. Quite the opposite. But he will be forced to do it because Congress is totally dysfunctional. We're getting to the point where if we have a sufficient fiscal crisis, we're going to have to take a page from the 1930s and essentially appoint a manager to run fiscal policy in Washington and do away with the Congress when it comes to the power of the purse.
07:39 They want to do everything else, but they don't want to do budgets and they don't want to do oversight. Members of Congress have become celebrities. They go around issuing press releases and having fun, but they don't want to do the hard work of actually governing the country when it comes to finance.
07:56 And that's the problem. So, at a certain stage, we're going to be forced to make changes in the way our country is governed. And I don't think Americans are ready for that. >> Wait a second, Chris. Hold up. The comment section is going to go bonkers on this. You mean like do away with Congress, like new institutions of governance, like really, you think get rid of >> No, have a manager instead of 535 people that can't make up their mind and who have no courage.
08:27 There's times in the past when members of Congress had to do things that were difficult and many times they lost their seats in the next election. But unfortunately in a democracy, you oftentimes have to have a really nasty crisis before Congress will do what they need to do. The 1930s is a case in point.
08:50 Franklin Roosevelt told them what to do. There was no discussion. There was no debate over Glass-Steagall or the other legislation. It was passed in 1933. They just went on the floor of the House and they said, "Here it is. Let's vote." >> Okay. So, you're not saying get rid of Congress. You're saying have somebody there to manage and tell them what to do. Okay. Got it.
09:10 Cuz some people are going to say Chris wants a dictator [laughter] otherwise. Yeah. Got it. >> But when things get bad enough, when the fiscal situation gets problematic enough, that's what you end up with. >> Gold has been one of the best performing major assets of the past few years. But if you've been watching markets lately, you know it hasn't always been a straight line.
09:31 But one thing that hasn't changed, investors around the world continue to view gold as an important portfolio asset amid persistent fiscal deficits, rising government spending, and continued central bank buying. Price appreciation isn't the only way to benefit from owning gold. What if your gold didn't just sit in a vault, but actually generated more gold? With Monetary Metals, you can earn a yield on your gold paid in physical gold without selling your metal.
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10:17 Instead of being a passive store of value, your gold can become a productive asset. If you'd like to learn more how to make your gold more productive, head to monetary-metals.com/thewrap. All right, Chris, I gotta dig in further with you because on the last episode, Saturday, it was right at the end, you kind of described this as we are entering the age of uncertainty and you were kind of referencing your expectations for housing and that Arian, even at the top of this show, you were talking about we could be headed for destruction in that
10:55 space. Can you just first of all frame up this age of uncertainty expectation that you have, the bigger picture, and then let's dive in on some of the areas that you think could be trouble spots, like housing for example. >> I think the uncertainty comes from things like growth and inflation. When people don't have a good sense of what the price for different goods that they need in their lives or in their business are going to cost, that causes enormous uncertainty and people start passing price increases forward because they
11:29 expect prices to go up. That's why expectations are such an important part of monetary policy and managing inflation. The Fed has this as one of their core principles. When you look at housing, we're in the midst of a reset. Now, as we've discussed, more than half the houses in this country went down in price over the last 12 months.
11:49 The entire school of houses, 150 plus million units, are slowly starting to turn and they are going to correct downward in price over the next couple years. Our friend Stan Middleman is going to be proven correct. In fact, he just put his house down in Florida up for sale and everybody in the market is buzzing about this.
12:11 So my point is that the age when asset prices were up forever, and stock prices and others just as kind of a gimme. You didn't even have to worry about it, like last year. It was almost impossible not to make money last year in the stock market. Julia, we're going to see a different environment going forward.
12:30 We're going to see an environment where we're going to see real defaults. We're going to see a cost of credit that is real. And I think you're also going to see a significant correction in home prices between now and 2028. >> Yep. That's the misery on the eights that Stan Middleman, your friend, has talked about and you've written about in the book Seen Around Corners, which we can also link.
12:51 >> I first had that discussion with him 10 years ago. That's how far back he predicted this. >> Wow. Yeah. Private credit. This is an interesting area you have discussed because I want to bring this up. I had Jeffrey Gundlach on the show this week and we were talking about private credit and he said something along the lines of private credit is the fuse and insurance companies are the bomb.
13:21 >> I agree with him. Yeah. Unfortunately, the private credit industry has used insurance companies to accumulate wealth much faster than is normal. Your typical insurance company will have equity returns somewhere in the low to mid-teens. So, figure somewhere between 12 and 15% a year. That's if you do everything right. You don't cheat.
13:45 But then you look at situations like 777 or like Guggenheim where the managers are in a hurry and they pile on the leverage, they put a lot of dubious assets into the insurance company and then the insurance company ends up failing. That's what we're seeing a lot of. So Jeffrey is absolutely dead right, which is that when we start to look at some of these carriers and we ask, can they pay their annuity holders? The answer is going to be no.
14:14 And then the principals behind these companies are going to get sued. You already see litigation with Mark Walter at Guggenheim. You're going to see litigation on this going on forever. It's going to be a mess. The states who regulate the insurance industry in this country are going to have to deal with this.
14:32 And that means that the surviving carriers in each state are essentially going to have to pass the hat and take over the failed carriers. Will that save the investors and the annuity holders and people with life insurance? No. In many cases, they may lose part or all of their money. So, that's why people are so upset.
14:52 I get calls about this all the time, Julia, and I refer them to some of my friends in the industry who are focused on this. >> Are the calls about the annuities specifically? >> Yeah. >> I've seen a lot of emails in the inbox too about this as well. Yeah. >> Well, people are worried. Insurance is supposed to be a boring industry that fulfills the promise to take care of somebody at the end of their life with life policies or to help with retirement with an annuity.
15:19 So when you start finding out that the go-go crowd in private credit on Wall Street, the Apollos and the rest of them, are controlling these companies, that doesn't make you feel good. >> No. And then also I imagine too, Chris, we're still early in, because in a rising rate environment, I imagine there's going to be more to come in this space, more problems.
15:39 >> Yes. >> Yeah. >> Well, it's already baked into the pie in many cases, but if an insurance company was buying the debt of a private equity firm, a portfolio company owned by a private equity company, and the company goes bankrupt, then obviously the insurance company is going to lose money.
16:00 They don't have enough capital to take those kind of losses. Usually insurance companies buy stocks, investment grade bonds, that sort of thing because they're trying to match up the asset side with a liability that usually has a 10 or 15 years. So you kind of want to match the duration of both sides.
16:20 It's very different from say a property casualty company, which is a totally different business because you're trying to insure risks that are frankly idiosyncratic, hurricanes, that sort of thing. But with a life company you kind of know what the duration is and as long as you buy good assets to fund those liabilities you're okay.
16:41 And that's most of the industry, by the way, Julia, we should say this, is frankly very well-managed, but you have some very big companies who've been starting to cheat, and that's a problem. And that makes people who have annuities worry, and they should be worried. >> Yeah. Well, it's certainly going to be a continuing conversation on this show as >> Oh, yeah.
17:03 >> It feels like we get headlines every single week in the space. >> Yeah. >> But this is the age of uncertainty. This is what we're talking about. >> Yeah. And I have to again give you credit because it seems like, Chris, you and your friend John Dizard were talking about where energy was headed, the problems that we were going to see crop up with diesel before anybody else was talking about it.
17:24 I feel like if you were watching this show, you would have been ahead on how that one was going to unfold. >> Yeah, I think people didn't want to focus on it. They were hoping for the best and there was zero leadership coming from President Trump. He didn't want to talk about it because he was the one that started this war.
17:42 Usually when the Israelis go into the Oval Office with an idea about starting a war, whoever was in the presidency at that time would kind of smile and say, "No, I don't think we're going to do that." This time around, Trump said, "Yes," that's the problem. And we started a conflict that neither one of us is prepared to finish.
18:01 >> So, what does that mean? Well, you can see now the Houthis have started to take control of the Red Sea. And what that's going to do medium to long term, Julia, is you're going to see the entire oil industry, the refining industry, have to redeploy assets to other parts of the world to get away from the Persian Gulf.
18:21 The Persian Gulf was the most efficient producer of oil and byproducts. That's why everybody was buying their products from them. Asia, for example, that's where all of their fuel and their petroleum products come from. So, if we have to now rebuild these industries in other parts of the world, it's going to take a long time to fix this.
18:43 >> And all of these forces at play, Chris, tie back to the bigger thesis of inflation is >> Yeah. here to stay, I take it. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Favorite pastime. It kind of reminds me of the 70s in a way. We had oil crises and other crises, but this is much broader. This is going to be a very difficult situation to manage.
19:10 Think about heating oil in Europe this winter. They are not going to have enough supply. You saw when President Trump was telling the Ukrainians to stop attacking Russia. That has had a huge impact on the availability of both oil and refined products because the Ukrainians have hurt the Russians very badly.
19:30 That war needs to end. But Vladimir Putin has no idea how to do it and he doesn't want to. He doesn't care. And frankly, neither do the Iranians. There is no incentive for the Iranians to negotiate peace. I listen to analysts talking about this like, oh, if they negotiate peace, they don't want to. The Iranians think they're winning.
19:53 They hope to close the Red Sea and start attacking Israel from a variety of different locations around them. That's what's going to happen. So, I think unfortunately we're not going to see stability or rationality in these areas for quite some time. >> Mhm. And I take it too that spills over into markets going forward, this age of uncertainty, instability.
20:19 >> Well, you see it in banks. As I noted yesterday in our notes, bank stocks have been pretty much dead this year. The top 25 or group of banks you barely recognize. None of the large caps are in a leadership position right now. And I think it's because of the bond market, number one, uncertainty about inflation and what the Fed is going to do going forward.
20:44 You had a couple banks already, Wells Fargo, Fifth Third, couple others, Huntington, all talking about the fact that their deposit rates are going up after six quarters of falling interest expense. That's a remarkable turn. We're going to see more of that. So over time, I think that investors are going to have to try and sort all of this out and figure out what they do with their money, how they allocate new cash that's coming in.
21:12 There's always new cash coming into the market. Because it's not obvious where you should put it right now, unlike last year, right? >> Wait, real quick, Chris, when you say the deposit rates are going up, the significance of that, is that like people taking cash out of the markets or figuring out what they want to do with it? What's going on? >> No, I think it just follows the bond market to some degree.
21:35 It's not like there's a shortage of cash, but Treasury is the single biggest borrower right now in the markets. We've had a pretty good run in terms of corporate debt issuance in the past 12 months, although it's slowing. The AI trade is slowing compared to the first half of this year.
21:53 You've already got banks warning on the capital market side. They're not going to make as much money on trading and issuance and advisory activities for their clients. So, what we're seeing is that the boom in AI and related stocks that really carried this market for the past couple years is kind of petering out and nobody is sure just exactly where we should be putting things.
22:18 The consumer durable sector for example, and consumer products generally, is under a lot of pressure from inflation. Our friend Adam Josephson has been writing about this. Very interesting to see the cost increases that many of these companies are having to absorb or pass through to consumers.
22:39 So I think that what we're seeing is uncertainty and instability in a lot of factors that were relatively stable over the last couple years and that's forcing managers and corporate executives to make a lot of tough decisions. >> Yeah. And I wonder if you have to also wait for clarity too on what this new normal looks like and where you want to be in that environment.
23:03 >> Well, exactly. Where do you put your money if there's no clear narrative for a lot of stocks, because last year you could have bought most large cap banks and made double digits if you had stayed in the market all year. >> That's not the case. >> You could have made money in gold last year too.
23:20 >> Yeah. And you will again. Gold doesn't track the normal markets. That was one of the interesting things that came out of the interview we did with David Co talk a couple weeks ago. You can't think about gold and silver the same way you think about stock prices. I mean, Western traders, that's what they want to hear.
23:39 But if you talk to people in Shanghai or India or any of the Asian countries, they think about metal in a very different way. They want to take delivery and put it in the sock drawer. >> Hey guys, thank you so much for watching this video. So, if you can just take a quick moment and hit that subscribe button, we are trying to hit our next goal of 100,000 subscribers.
23:58 Really appreciate you. And back to the video. Is there anything you can share from how you're thinking about your own allocation these days, across equities, precious metals, commodities, things like that? Anything that you're willing to share, able to share? [sighs] >> Sure.
24:17 I mean, I haven't lightened up on my two bank positions. I own Schwab and I own Flagstar. That's the turnaround situation. I've been adding to gold and silver both over the past 6 months. The rest of it I've pretty much left. I have a fairly boring portfolio. One of my bigger positions is Annaly, obviously. They're doing quite well.
24:39 I think they're going to be one of the survivors in the coming consolidation in the mortgage space simply because they're an investor. They go and they buy assets, they lever them up, and they manage the spreads and the other factors in that equation. Don't have a lot of credit risk. But other than that, I'm thinking about different areas where I might add exposure, but there's nothing obvious that's just banging on my door saying, "Hey, Chris, you should do this.
25:08 " So I have taken profits in some of my more cyclical positions over the past couple of months, [snorts] but that's it. I am trying to set the portfolio up for a period where there may not be a very strong trend in these markets. You want to own quality. I own Schwab because they keep growing. I think it's one of the more interesting plays in the bank complex because they don't take a lot of credit risk.
25:34 They have risk in their investment portfolio which we've talked about before, but they seem to be paying a little better attention to that. I think they could still do better if Schwab restructured their bond investments. They could probably pick up a point in yield, which would be very nice.
25:50 That would drop right down to the bottom line. But a lot of these management teams don't want to take the hit in terms of their reputation by saying, "Well, gee, we didn't do that right during COVID. We made a mistake." Bank of America is another case in point. Very, very badly managed bond portfolio.
26:08 It's a point and a half below the market average. How does that happen? Right? It's a huge bank, $800 billion worth of bond investments. So, to me, there's a lot of low-hanging fruit among these companies, but you have managers who are comfortable and they don't want to be bothered. [snorts] So, that's always [clears throat] the problem.
26:26 Shareholders don't control companies, Julia. Managers control companies. >> Yeah. Well, I also have to talk to you about, we got to bring up the crypto space. So, we haven't talked about crypto in a while because in your notes, you also flagged the SEC released its long-awaited innovation exemption.
26:46 >> Yes. >> Yeah. Wasting little time to start filling regulatory gaps following the Clarity Act's failure to advance in Congress. >> Yeah. It's interesting. A lot of firms were out there starting to trade stocks synthetically by just literally setting up an unregulated futures contract and letting you trade stock.
27:07 What Paul Atkins at the SEC is going to do though is he's going to allow the issuers of securities to opt out of that and say, "No, you can't create an alternative market for my stock." I think that's probably a good idea. I've been worried about Paul because I've known him for a long time. He's a great conservative, but he was a little bit too much bought into this whole crypto thing.
27:32 And I think we've got to defend our markets. We have to defend issuers or they're not going to use our markets. If they feel like their stock is being manipulated by off-exchange traders and various types of platforms, many of which are offshore, they're not going to want to use our markets. So, I was glad to see the agenda that the SEC put out there.
27:55 And I hope as they go forward with their rulemaking they do pick up some of the attributes that were in the Clarity Act. But there's not a consensus on Capitol Hill for that legislation, even with the changes they made in the 11th hour. People said to me, Chris, you taking a victory lap because Clarity failed?
28:16 And no, I wasn't, because I wasn't sure it was a great thing for the crypto industry either. There was a lot of stuff in there for know-your-customer, anti-money-laundering that I don't think many of them could have complied with. So, we'll have to see these agencies like the SEC and the CFTC do their own thing now because Congress is clearly not able to legislate.
28:40 >> Do you think that Congress is going to be able to legislate even after the midterms? >> Well, perhaps. I think if the Democrats take the House, they would pass something that was much more restrictive on crypto. Ironically enough, the Republicans have kind of bought into the idea of crypto as some sort of innovation.
29:01 I view it as a polite form of fraud. I still think crypto tokens should be regulated by the gaming commissions in the various states because that's what it is. It's a form of gaming. Same thing with predictive markets. To me, that's simply a bet there. There's no investment thesis behind it.
29:21 It's just me saying, "Hey, who's going to win this football game?" When I was much younger and I was a trader at Bear Stearns in London, we used to have a football pool and we could call up Ladbrokes and lay off risk if we had too much of one team or another, right? What's the difference between that and the predictive market? It is a gaming contract.
29:42 So, I think we're going to sort this out eventually, but people are always looking for ways to make money, Julia. And God bless them. If you want to trade crypto tokens, off you go. Right. >> Indeed, Chris. We got one viewer question in today. Y'all can send your questions to me every week for Chris.
30:04 But Chris, with flattening of rates, will you change your stand on Annaly? >> Not right now. No. Because remember, it's not about rates, it's about spreads. What you want to do is look at the treasury yields for 8 to 10 years and look at the yield on mortgage-backed securities, number one. Then you want to look at the other components of their business. Mortgage servicing rights.
30:24 They have a large chunk of MSRs. Are they going anywhere given where interest rates are? No. Prepayments are below 6% a year, which used to be the lowest level we had for modeling. Now it's like four, five. So, I think overall I'm pretty happy with Annaly. They're the best managed REIT in the industry. I also own AGNC.
30:48 So, as long as they're able to maintain that dividend, I'm very happy with it. If it trades off, which it hasn't significantly, I'd probably buy more. So, my basis in Annaly, just so everybody knows, is about 0.9 of book. So, I'm pretty happy with it. I own the common, by the way.
31:06 I don't bother with the preferreds. I know they love asking about it. I feel like we always own it and you know what, it's a good look. I own no T-bills now. I put most of my liquidity into Annaly simply because they own government-insured securities. They also have some private label exposure but they're very good at managing that. They outsource their servicing for the assets they own and they're also an issuer. They're a very interesting company. I think if you compare them with, say, Rithm
31:39 Capital or any of the other hybrid REITs out there that own both loans and securities, they're by far and away the best managed, and the market tells you that if you look at the valuation, because remember REITs are about income. You're not looking for capital appreciation in the stock of a REIT, but Annaly has done quite well.
31:58 >> Before I let you go here, Chris, what are you going to be watching for the remainder, not even just next week, but the remainder of the year? What do you think will be the big stories you'll be paying attention to? >> Well, we're writing about the banks next week.
32:14 We're going to be doing our update on the big money centers. We're going to be in New York next week to speak at the University Club on Tuesday, which is going to be great fun. >> Is that a solo talk, Chris? >> That's a solo Chris talk. Yeah, we're going to have book signing. We're going to have lots of fun. >> I'm following the bond market very closely because that right now is really what matters.
32:37 And we're kind of running another interview with John Dizard, which I'm really looking forward to. John is such a smart man. He is a font of information. For example, you probably saw 60 Minutes over the weekend when they talked about rescuing the American flyer in Iran. Why did they have 95 people on the ground in Iran, Julia? Were they there just to rescue an aviator or were they doing something else? >> [snorts] >> And I think the people at 60 Minutes know. So more to come on that one too.
33:09 >> More to come. Chris Whalen, chairman of Whalen Global Advisors, author of The Institutional Risk Analyst blog, which by the way folks, we do have a discount for viewers of The Wrap. That's in the show notes. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time, all of your knowledge, helping us all learn and get better every single week.
33:26 And I want to give a special shout out again to our partners at Monetary Metals. You can head over to monetary-metals.com/thewrap. We thank them for their support and I thank you all for watching every single Saturday. We love doing this for you all.