Hidden Forces

In Episode 372 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas tries to make sense of the recent assassination attempt against Donald Trump by focusing on (1) what we know so far about what actually happened on July 13th, (2) the public’s reaction to the events of that day, and (3) the implications of the shooting for the 2024 election and the country’s future. 

This monologue explores (1) deep state conspiracy theories, (2) the role of aesthetics and narrative in rewriting history, (3) dominance hierarchies and capitulation to the authority of the alpha, and (4) alternate reality games.

Demetri also touches on how recent events could...

In Episode 371 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Henry Olsen, author of “Working Class Republican” and host of “Beyond the Polls” about the unprecedented circumstances surrounding Joe Biden’s candidacy for the 2024 Democratic Presidential nomination, who will replace him, and why Donald Trump is well-positioned to win in 2024.

Demetri and Henry Olsen examine the unprecedented circumstances surrounding Joe Biden’s recent debate performance and the pressure mounting on him to withdraw from the race, including rumors that the U.S. President may in fact have Parkinson’s disease or some other type of neurological disorder that disqualifies h...

In Episode 370 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak, the Global Chief Economist at BCG and the author of “Shocks, Crises, and False Alarms,” about how to assess macroeconomic risk without relying on broken models, pervasive doom-mongering, and whipsawing data prints that have little to do with the structural drivers of economic and financial change.

The shocks and crises of recent years are a rude awakening for executives and investors who have spent the last 40 years operating in a relatively benign macroeconomic and political environment. This period of geopolitical convergence characterized by increased trade and capi...

In Episode 369 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Jeffrey Sachs, a world-renowned economist, bestselling author, and professor at Columbia University, where he was the former director of The Earth Institute. He is also one of the most reputable critics of U.S. foreign policy and the ‘Deep State’, especially as it pertains to the ongoing war in Ukraine and U.S. relations towards Moscow since the end of the Cold War.

Demetri developed an extensive outline for this conversation, the scope of which vastly exceeded the time allotted for it. Dr. Sachs will be coming back on t...

In Episode 368 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Brian Janous. Brian is the Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Cloverleaf Infrastructure. With over 20 years of experience in the electricity and data center industries, Brian is the perfect person to talk to about the growth in electricity demand being forecasted by North American grid planners as they try to get ahead of several converging trends in the energy space, including the rapid buildout of AI data centers, the onshoring of new industrial capacity, and the introduction of more intermittent sources of energy like wind and solar onto the grid.<...

In Episode 367 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Spencer Jakab and Andrew Left. Jakab is an award-winning financial journalist who edits the Wall Street Journal’s “Heard on the Street” column. He is also the author of “The Revolution That Wasn't,” a book about the meme stock craze that overtook the video game retailer GameStop in 2021 and the heroes and villains, like activist short-seller Andrew Left, who made that story so captivating and powerful.

As the founder of Citron Research, Andrew famously bet against GameStop during the mania of 2021, only to get squeezed out of his position a...

In Episode 366 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Nick Bostrom, the founding director of the Future of Humanity Institute and Principal Researcher at the Macrostrategy Research Initiative. Nick Bostrom is also the author of Superintelligence, which was the book that ignited a global conversation about what might happen if AI development goes wrong. In his latest book, Deep Utopia, Bostrom attempts to answer the opposite question – what happens if things go right?

At such a point of technological maturity driven by further and further advancements in artificial intelligence, humanity will confront challenges that are philosophical and sp...

In Episode 365 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Lawrence Fossi; Lawrence worked as a commercial trial attorney until 2011 and as the portfolio manager for a family office until 2020. He has written extensively about the automotive company Tesla at Seeking Alpha under the pseudonym “Montana Skeptic” and now publishes at montanaskeptic.substack.com.

It’s been three years since we last devoted an episode to the electric car company Telsa and its superstar CEO, Elon Musk. Given the progress that’s been made in EVs in the years since, as well as the recent turmoil at Tesla, Demetri...

In Episode 364 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Gavekal CEO Louis-Vincent Gave about de-dollarization, U.S. re-industrialization, and his case for a Chinese “deflationary boom” and revaluation of the renminbi.

In the first hour of their conversation, Demetri asks Louis-Vincent Gave about the most important trends set to define the investment landscape in the years ahead. Gave argues that the U.S. and Europe are set to undergo a long period of structurally high inflation while China’s economy is set to experience a “deflationary boom” partly driven by rapid advancements in key industries like semiconductor manufactur...

In Episode 363 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with investors Paulo Macro and Le Shrub about their investment ideas, frameworks, and processes for identifying investment opportunities and managing risk.

In the first hour, Demetri asks Paulo and Le Shrub about some of their respective frameworks, including the EM-ification of developed economies, the need to understand the incentives of policymakers, and how these frameworks can help inform your expectations about interest rates, inflation, credit rationing, and much more.

In the second hour, Paulo Macro and Le Shrub discuss how the contemporary strain on the international system...