Title: Doomberg: The Dangerous Reality of Our Current Economic Crisis Show: What the Finance (WTFinance podcast) — host Anthony Fatseas Guest: Doomberg — the anonymous energy/finance Substack collective (green-chicken avatar), doomberg.substack.com Date: 2026-AUG-28 URL: https://youtu.be/20fQIC6PwQI Length: 32:56 Note: Full-length interview; '>>' marks a speaker change (the guest speaks as a collective — "we"). Fillers (um/uh/you know/like-as-tic/"I mean" when contentless) removed and stutters and false starts collapsed; wording otherwise verbatim. Unambiguous ASR mis-spellings of proper nouns are corrected to the intended entity: "Duneberg"/"juneberg.com" = Doomberg / doomberg.com, "Anthony Fats" = Anthony Fatseas, "Bessant"/ "Bent"/"Bessence" = Scott Bessent, "Malay" = Javier Milei, "backerta"/"vakama"/"Vaka Merta" = Vaca Muerta, "Ridgy"/"RIGY" = RIGI, "Schroinger's" = Schrödinger's, "hedgeimonyy" = hegemony, "Pete Hegath" = Pete Hegseth, "Xiin Peg" = Xi Jinping, "Nome" = Noem, "gawatts" = gigawatts. Two further ASR corrections are judgement calls and flagged here: at 20:43 "the combatants in World War II ... since 2014" is rendered "World War III" (the 2014 dating and the separate, correct "co-victor of World War II" a line later make the intent clear); at 24:58 "entire refineries in the Middle East that run exclusively on oil from Canada" is rendered "Midwest". Two garbles are left as-spoken because the intended word is genuinely ambiguous: "the escalation options are uncalable" and "possession is 90% of the lie" (the idiom is "nine-tenths of the law"). Macro/geopolitics-heavy: US treasuries losing pristine-collateral status, the Canada–US trade war and North American energy, Schrödinger's Strait of Hormuz, and the "agreement-capable" problem created by the short US political cycle.
00:00 There's a narrative that saturates western propaganda of omnipotence, that in the end no adversaries would dare cross certain lines. And the real world — people punch back. We've said this all along — may he rest in peace, but when Lindsey Graham would go on Fox News talking about all the wars she'd like to start, we would say out loud on podcasts, you do know that the other side can punch back.
00:32 And I think Iran has proven that not only can the other side punch back, but occasionally they're willing to punch back. And if you're not prepared to be on the receiving end of these blows, you're very quickly put in the position that Trump finds himself in, which is the escalation options are uncalable.
00:54 But they're the only real face-saving way out of these crises. So anyway, we often get critiques and push back when we say such things, like one of the reasons you shouldn't start a war is because you might lose it. But here we are nonetheless, so we won't be holding our breath for any apologies.
01:17 >> Hey everyone, my name is Anthony Fatseas and welcome to another episode of the What the Finance podcast. On this podcast, I have the pleasure of welcoming back a very popular guest, probably had him on the most of anyone on the podcast. So Doomberg, thanks so much for coming back on. >> Anthony, great to see you again, my friend.
01:32 >> Yeah, looking forward to it. It's been probably three months, four months since we last spoke. We thought things were maybe going to slow up in the Middle East. It definitely hasn't. [laughter] >> Yeah. No, fascinating time. Of course, we were just shooting the breeze before you hit record about — there's no shortage of interesting things to write about and to talk about.
01:50 So, I'm sure we have a packed agenda for today. >> Yeah, definitely. So much to touch on. And as you know, where I really like to start this conversation is very broad. So, what are you currently seeing in the economy, markets? What's on your mind? >> Yeah, I think if we had to take a global view, there's a lot of digesting going on of historically consequential events and we always seem to be on the cusp of either resolution or escalation.
02:23 And so just as we are recording this now, we have reports coming out of Moscow that CIA director John Ratcliffe paid a surprise visit to Moscow. Kind of ominous, I suppose. Back to my original point, this can cut both ways. Maybe this terrible disastrous war might be brought to an end. Or maybe like the last time a CIA director visited Moscow, the war is about to escalate.
02:50 We have the burgeoning trade dispute with Canada, which really throws into the air many of our foundational assumptions as it pertains to the North American energy market for reasons I'm happy to get into. We have the situation in the Middle East, sort of Schrödinger's Strait of Hormuz.
03:12 It's both open and closed at the same time depending on who you ask. And then all of this is priced into the various energy markets around the world that we follow. And so we try to extract as much useful information from those markets in order to ascertain which camp full of spin we should be residing in on any particular day. So yeah, lots going on.
03:38 I suppose it's never been a better time to operate our business. As distressing as some of these headlines are, it is certainly intellectually quite stimulating and challenging to try to cover, let alone predict. But yeah, that's where we are at the broadest view. I think we're in digest mode until we see the resolution of these major conflicts or their escalation.
04:03 And the problem with that kind of state is that it's anxiety-inducing, I guess is the words that I would use, in the sense that the bifurcation of those two possible outcome states are so far apart that standing in between them is a bit unsettling. >> Yeah, definitely. I think we've all gotten used to it though.
04:28 Just this constant uncertainty, this constant instability. I feel like we've had it for six or so years and everyone's probably used to it. Yeah. Not as shocked these days. >> It's funny you should say that. I think you get conditioned by your environment to absorb that level of stress.
04:51 And I say this from a human perspective, but also I think economies do, markets do, cultures do, but it's not normal. The world need not be this way. It is this way. We acknowledge reality, but we also occasionally remind ourselves that it need not be this way. It hasn't always been this way. It doesn't need to continue to be this way.
05:10 So let's hope that the CIA director's visit to Moscow is the beginning of the end of the war, not the preamble to the escalation of it. Let's hope that the bluster of Scott Bessent and his really shocking editorial in the Financial Times is the cover for a face-saving exit to the war in Iran and not the beginning of a long protracted economic war between the US and China because that's what those threats ultimately amount to.
05:43 Let's hope that Xi Jinping's visit to Washington at the end of this month, at the end of September, whenever it is, goes off without a hitch. That the leaders have a fruitful and productive meeting and that maybe the path forward to the transition from dominant US hegemony to a more balanced multipolar world is one that occurs with less war and less economic uncertainty.
06:14 Those are the hopeful, perhaps naive ways to look at the world. But again as I said originally, the opposite side of all of these coins is pretty stark. You could see escalation in the Middle East and destruction of the oil and gas producing facilities across the Arab Gulf states.
06:35 You could see escalation in the war in Ukraine where drone making facilities in NATO countries are targeted by Russia's formidable inventory of high precision ballistic missiles. You could see China launch a blockade of Taiwan at probably the most inopportune time considering that there are no US aircraft carriers in the Pacific.
06:59 And frankly, a hidden risk — I shouldn't say hidden risk, a low probability risk that we've been pondering for a long time — is the whole Korea situation. If North Korea wanted to make a move, you would think that a certain window has become available. And if all of these things were to happen all at once in a coordinated fashion, it's unclear to us what the US and its allies would do about any of them, let alone all of them.
07:34 I do think there's a narrative that saturates western propaganda of omnipotence, that in the end no adversaries would dare cross certain lines. And the real world — people punch back. We've said this all along — may he rest in peace, but when Lindsey Graham would go on Fox News talking about all the wars she'd like to start, we would say out loud on podcasts, you do know that the other side can punch back.
08:06 And I think Iran has proven that not only can the other side punch back, but occasionally they're willing to punch back. And if you're not prepared to be on the receiving end of these blows, you're very quickly put in the position that Trump finds himself in, which is the escalation options are uncalable.
08:28 But they're the only real face-saving way out of these crises. So anyway, we often get critiques and push back when we say such things, like one of the reasons you shouldn't start a war is because you might lose it. But here we are nonetheless, so we won't be holding our breath for any apologies.
08:46 >> Yeah, I think the challenge is that the US is obviously a democracy. There's elections. There's people that you actually have to keep happy. There's only so much pain that they want to put up with until — we saw with Afghanistan, we saw with the Middle East, until they pull out and then these countries or these factions just need to bide their time until they can basically— >> We can quibble about the extent to which the US is still a democracy.
09:10 But in theory your point is well made, which is that the political cycle in the US is short and there's lots of consequences that flow from that. One of the consequences that flows from that, that affects us for example in the energy space, is that the capital planning cycle of heavy industry is longer than the political cycle of most western democracies.
09:33 I use that word prior to its semantic shift. But there's another consequence of that which the Iran situation actually lays bare, which is that the US and its European allies are viewed in the rest of the world as not being agreement capable. This is a phrase that the Russians have been using for many years and I'm sure we will be called purveyors of Russian talking points for even bringing it up.
10:08 But I think the war in Iran — forget Russia. Look, Iran negotiated with the Obama administration, whatever you think of Obama, a nuclear deal. That deal was agreed upon by Iran and the United States. It was stamped with the approval of the United Nations Security Council, which is the governing body of the post-World War II economic and military world order.
10:37 The guarantors of that deal were supposed to be the Europeans. This was all signed and concessions were made by the US side, by the Iranian side. Again, if you think it was a terrible deal, if you think Obama was an idiot for signing it and you believe the propaganda narrative about pallets full of cash on airplanes and all the stuff that has come since, that's fine.
11:04 You're certainly free to believe that. But from the perspective of the other side, they cut a deal with the Americans that Trump promptly ripped up when he became president. So, do you cut a deal with Trump now who is at least on the surface a wounded political entity when the Democrats look set to regain at least some of the levers of power? Do you wait? The political cycle in China is much longer than the two-year electoral cycle of the US.
11:33 Of that I can assure you. The political cycle of Iran is much longer than the US political cycle. And so just from a strategic negotiating perspective, it behooves the geopolitical opponents of the US who are fully aware of the nature and frequency and amplitude of the US political cycle that they just bide their time, call their shots, move when it's to their advantage, pause when it's not. It's a real issue.
12:02 One that's rarely acknowledged in the western media. But as a manifestation of what we've observed just in the energy industry — and I'll give you one example — the wind industry in the US. We're no fans of wind as a technology. We think it has been wildly exaggerated. We think that it has received far too much in the way of government support and we would frankly agree with President Trump's various executive actions since becoming the president again on the wind sector.
12:33 But it must be said, pointedly, this is a dirty trick that was done to the equity owners of the various cap tables of wind energy enterprises who were only following the cues of the Biden administration. And so you have the president of the United States then dictating to an entire industry and the banks that support that industry that the government was going to put 30 gigawatts of offshore wind off the Atlantic coast and you needed to be doing this now.
13:02 And money was harvested and invested and tax breaks were promised and deals were made and capital was risked and then with the swing of a few votes in seven states in the US all of that got destroyed. Look, everyone involved is an adult presumably, sophisticated, well-heeled investors. Everybody understands it's called investing, not printing.
13:31 But still, tens of billions of dollars worth of risk capital was incinerated on a political whim. Again, we happen to think that that Biden policy was fantastical. It was stupid, frankly. But nonetheless, as a cautionary tale to say — oh, I don't know — oil and gas companies who are being badgered by the Trump administration to invest in Venezuela.
13:57 What happens when President Noem or President Harris or President AOC come along and decide that— oh yeah, all those billions that you were strongarmed into deploying, yeah, sorry, just go ahead and mark those zero. You do enough of that enough times. You rip up enough deals that have been passed by the United Nations Security Council. You renege on us, you sign deals in bad faith. Well, then suddenly the rest of the world might take their time, might demand more show than tell at the upfront of such deals and so on.
14:20 And I just think, integrated over time, for all of the strengths and weaknesses of the various ways in which countries organize themselves politically, the amplitude and frequency and phase changes of the US political system does make it very difficult for people on the other side of the negotiating table to
14:56 strike deals that they can believe in. And in fact, if you read the Canadian papers over the weekend, which of course we've done, that sentiment proliferates the commentary. One of the things that caused the negotiations to break down was a desire on the part of the Canadians — we think quite understandably — a desire on their part to ensure that once the deal is agreed and locked, it can't be modified.
15:24 And apparently the US balked at this. So at least if you read the reporting of the New York Times, it just broke before we hit record here that I was reading. So yeah, it's one of those meta effects of the US political system that doesn't get recognized perhaps as often as it should. >> Yeah, it's really concerning because that basically just sounds like an emerging market, like what we've seen in Latin America with lots of shorting— >> Look, this is Argentina, right? Milei is confronting
15:59 this right now as he tries to get global capital to develop Vaca Muerta. This is exactly the analogy, which is why we're so familiar with it because you're confronted with this in the oil and gas space so often, especially as the easy deposits in the friendly jurisdictions are exploited and you go around the world in search of the next Guyana.
16:23 That's what actually makes Guyana so valuable, by the way. It's not just the quality of the resource. It's the fact that that jurisdiction was there to be shaped effectively by Exxon, whereas if you look at Vaca Muerta in Argentina, as much as Milei is trying to convince investors that once again he's not Lucy holding the football.
16:50 And so, perfect example, they have this law RIGI, this large investment tax credit that is meant to motivate foreign investors to develop Vaca Muerta essentially. And the heart of the promise is historically Argentina made foreign investors hold their profits in local currency for a certain period of time before it could be released outside of the country.
17:20 Well, when your currency is debasing at the rate at which the Argentinian peso has debased, that's effectively a crippling tax. And so you can't attract foreign investment. Well, Milei comes along and passes this law and promises that you can repatriate your profits much faster and you have various exemptions after a certain period of time for the remaining life of the project and so on and so on and so on.
17:47 And that's all great except no law that Milei passes can bind future governments in Argentina. And so who's to say that Milei, who is a volatile character if there ever was one, is going to have the staying power to see those promises through. And so it's just chicken or the egg, pun intended.
18:08 Nobody goes there anymore because it's too crowded, you know. And so the last thing US diplomacy needs is to be considered the Argentina of geopolitics. But unfortunately the chaotic nature of the president's Truth Social account is — do I need to finish the sentence? >> No, you're definitely not.
18:36 And yeah, that's why the RIGI, they're asking people, the majority of the investment to be in the first few years, I'm assuming within Milei's tenure. So it's quite interesting how they've structured that to try and probably get the benefits or maybe to make sure that these companies don't just say we're going to invest in five years, after when someone else comes in.
18:56 But yeah, it's quite interesting. So, I guess if we go to the Middle East, we didn't go into what solution do you see there? Is it — I know you've talked about just probably Trump backing down. Seems like Iran isn't backing down either and they're sort of pushing.
19:11 >> Yeah. There is, I would argue, short of nuclear weapons which we don't think actually will solve the issue, there is very little in the way that we can envision today of satisfactory military options. And so this is why you see Scott Bessent taking the lead. It's not Pete Hegseth anymore that is publishing bellicose editorials in the Financial Times, or tweets and so on. It's Scott Bessent because — I want to choose my words carefully. A remaining and not yet fully tapped
19:53 weapon in the US inventory is of course the financial one. But that comes with some risk. What makes the holding of US treasuries attractive, at least historically, is its neutrality and its liquidity. So as the US has tried to use the weapon of being able to transact in the US dollar system, which is the weapon that Scott Bessent is undoubtedly threatening to deploy, is deploying, has deployed against Iran, China, Russia, North Korea.
20:43 In other words, the combatants in World War III as we would describe it since 2014, with each iteration, with each firing of the cannon, the gun barrel gets a little warm and the attractiveness of holding treasuries, setting aside the fiscal situation in the US, the attractiveness from a neutrality and a liquidity perspective
21:11 diminishes. And what do I mean by that? Well, if the US can participate in the freezing of the foreign reserves of a P5 country and co-victor of World War II, both of which Russia undoubtedly is. What is to stop Secretary Bessent from freezing your reserves? Fill in the blank country A B C D E, virtually every country on Earth, even Canada now as we're talking. When we were doing some brainstorming over the weekend applying our classic lateral thinking techniques, one of the premises that we
21:53 brainstormed around was Canada halts all oil exports to the US. Perfectly possible. It's their physical property. They're a sovereign country. The prime minister can invoke emergency powers and declare that oil from Alberta shall no longer be exported to the United States. And in fact, compared to other producers, given the proportion of oil that is actually mined in the oil sands as opposed to drilled for, it would actually be comparatively easier for Canada to do that than say Iran, Russia.
22:31 Well, that very quickly — all roads lead to military conflict, as crazy as it sounds, because that would just be an intolerable situation for Trump and it would collapse a key axiom of our understanding of North America's energy markets, that the US is a global energy superpower in large part because it is a captive customer of this heavy oil from Alberta. And if suddenly that flow stops, then you have a real energy crisis. Forget the Strait of Hormuz. And now we don't think Carney will do that. We actually have a different view
23:03 as to what's actually going on which we're writing about right now. But just the fact that Trump is talking about renaming Lake Ontario and the premier of Ontario is telling Trump to kiss his you know what. Suddenly, do economic sanctions against Canada seem as outrageous and as remote a possibility as they might have seemed a year ago, five years ago? Of course not.
23:31 So in a world where Canada might come under fire from the US, why does Brazil want to hold any US treasuries? Why does South Korea want to hold any US treasuries now that Trump cancelled military exercises with South Korea and is making romantic overtures to Kim Jong-un? Why does South Africa, a BRICS country, [snorts] want to hold US treasuries? Pick your favorite country.
23:59 Why would any of them? Why would New Zealand? And so suddenly the beating heart of the global financial system, US treasuries, the pristine collateral that it once was, is a hot potato. Just as the US is turning out the need for $2 trillion worth of on the run paper every year, you suddenly realize what a historic moment we find ourselves in.
24:32 So, as I go back to the very first answer in our discussion, we just are in this weird steady state where of course we assume that an offramp with Canada will be found and all of this is just another episode of social media nonsense and there's some grander plan. But it doesn't mean that we don't quickly get to the point where things escalate out of control.
24:58 Unless you think this is crazy talk from a green chicken. You consider that Hydro-Québec is a major electricity provider to the US Northeast. You consider that Ontario is a major electricity provider to the heartland of the US. You consider that there are entire refineries in the Midwest that run exclusively on oil from Canada.
25:21 You turn all those off all at once, things get pretty interesting pretty quickly. I can say that the US has gone to war over far less. And I could also say given our knowledge of Canadian politics and our understanding of the propaganda there, the country is very angry, very unified and supports Mark Carney wholeheartedly in this fight.
25:43 And I would argue that Trump's popularity rating in Canada's probably in the low teens. And if you did a poll of Canadians right now, Carney would get probably a three-quarters majority in support of his position. There's a lot of risk in the air. A lot of uncertainty and yet we all just go about our lives as though this will all work out.
26:06 Nothing bad ever happens, I suppose. >> Yeah. I imagine even though it would be very bad for the US if Canada shut off oil, I imagine it'd be even worse for Canada. >> Would it though? The possession is 90% of the lie. Go back to Europe cutting itself off of natural gas from Russia. It didn't hurt Russia. Russia gets more gas for cheap.
26:29 Canada keeps more of its oil. The price of oil goes up. Yes, it would be bad. It'd be terrible. It's a terrible precedent. Canada's not going to do it. I understand it sounds hyperbolic. But when you go down that path and you can see the— just today and since the time we've been talking the language coming out of both sides is not conciliatory.
26:52 Last I checked Trump doesn't handle it well when people punch back. At least not his initial response at least is not ideal. And judging by what the president has been posting on his Truth Social account, we're going down the road of escalation. Canadians are a proud people.
27:14 Mark Carney is a sophisticated politician, as we have written in the draft that I'm currently working on, the only living human that we know of who has been the head of the central bank of two sovereign nations. So yeah, it's quite the — you couldn't have a greater contrast in many ways than Carney and Trump.
27:36 Carney is a globalist delight. Goldman Sachs, Harvard, Oxford I believe, Bank of England, Bank of Canada, Brookfield Asset Management, as well trained and as sophisticated as they come. And so here we are. >> Yeah, definitely. And I think you were mentioning the tools that Bessent is using with sanctions and he sort of didn't go as far to talk about Chinese companies or Chinese banks.
28:05 So this is another potential escalation point that we're seeing where >> if they start sanctioning those companies. Yeah. So, what gives us hope? Because again, it wasn't my intent to sound [laughter] this to sound so doomy today, Anthony, but I guess such are the times.
28:25 Trump's post over the weekend, January 1st for the tariffs. I kind of view that as a walkback dressed in colorful language. The fact that Bessent did not name the major Chinese banks, which by the way makes his entire editorial in the Financial Times toothless. I'm sure you saw that editorial. Every question at that press conference, which as our friend JJ over at Market Vibes noted today was wildly undercovered.
28:56 Was about are you saying China or not? Because literally China's 90% of the problem. And if you don't sanction China, then you're not really addressing the problem. And Bessent kind of wavered on it. Implied kind of, sort of, might, maybe, but didn't want to go there today.
29:16 By the way, if Bessent had rolled out sanctions against the major Chinese financial institutions, I don't think you'd see Xi Jinping in Washington this month. >> No, definitely not. So, we talked about a lot of negative stuff and anything positive that's currently on your mind that you— >> Well, the weather's beautiful today [laughter] and again, there's hope.
29:38 I think one of the things that we take some solace in is the fact that the CIA director was in Moscow today. Yes, that could mean ominous days are ahead, but at least they're talking to each other. The US and Russia is what I mean by that. At least they're talking to each other at a diplomatic level where decisions and deals can be made and agreed to where the likelihood of serious implementation of those deals is higher than would otherwise be.
30:13 One hopes that this visit to Moscow marks the beginning of the end of the decline in relationships around the world and perhaps the beginning of the ascension from the hole that we find ourselves in all around the world. In our ideal world, a reasonable deal would be struck in Ukraine
30:39 that takes into account both Russia's and Europe's national security considerations. A détente could be struck in the Middle East. Trade disputes between friendly neighboring countries can be settled in an amicable and equitable way and the world gets back to doing business with each other peacefully.
31:08 And so I guess my version of happiness is naivety. What can I say? >> Yeah. If you don't look at the news, things normally go and keep going. [laughter] >> I picked the wrong profession, my friend. [laughter] >> Exactly. We're always confronted by it. It's just trying to not take it too seriously. And if these negotiations with Russia don't work, I know you've mentioned the risk of them cutting off Europe this winter as well.
31:33 That could be a massive— >> Well, yeah, lots of escalation rungs on the ladder. Probably no need to cover them all here because none of them are good. >> Yeah, definitely. Makes sense. So, D, thanks again for your time. Really appreciate it. My last question is one, what is one message you want people to take away from the conversation? >> Yeah, look, it's important to confront reality.
31:54 Opponents sometimes punch back. Geopolitical actions have consequences. And the last thing I guess I'd say, if you want to stay abreast of some of this or at least our views on it, you can always head over to doomberg.com and sign up. But Anthony, it's always great to be with you.
32:12 I think I've said on your show before that maybe we'll have less to talk about next time I show up, but I'm going to go ahead and park that because that's probably never going to happen. [laughter] >> I think it's exhilarating. That's the world we live in. >> Indeed. Good to see you, my friend. >> Great.
32:29 Great saying I'll put where everyone can find you in the description below. >> Yep. Appreciate it. >> Hey everyone, thank you so much for listening. Really appreciate your support and I hope you found amazing value out of this interview. If you really enjoyed it, would appreciate if you liked and subscribed or shared. It really helps with the podcast.
32:43 We're still trying to expand, get to more people to help make sure that everyone understands and decodes what's really happening in the world of finance, investing, macroeconomics, and geopolitics. If you enjoyed this one, then you might enjoy this other interview as well. It's really appreciated and thank