The Higher Standard

Brent just hit $116, the highest since April 30, and the reasons keep stacking up. The U.S. ordered non-essential staff out of Saudi Arabia, Aramco told Dhahran headquarters staff to evacuate, the Houthis keep striking Saudi targets, and Trump says something happens "fairly soon" on Iran. Thursday also gave the Nasdaq 100 its worst day since June, down almost 3%, as OpenAI's raise got marked down $150 billion to a $1.25 trillion valuation. The 10-year sits at 4.99% after Treasuries' biggest rally in over two years. And tonight Moody's reviews France while its bond spread to Germany sits at a post-2011 high of 176bps. Oil...

Oil just whipsawed on a headline. Brent spiked to $111.99 on Tuesday, then reversed and settled at $108.79 when a Qatar and Pakistan "compromise proposal" hit the wires, and Iran fired back that reports a deal is close are wrong. The IRGC says two tankers were set ablaze by its mines, and Kpler counts at least 18 vessels hit in two weeks. Here's the strange part: stocks don't care. The Nasdaq 100 is up 2.3% from Friday's close, the VIX sank from 20 to 16.65, and the 10-year is still parked above 5%. Then the UK printed 3.5% inflation against 3.4% expected, and the Bank of England is eyeing...

What does it take to build a $150 million wellness empire without selling your soul - or your company - to the highest bidder? This week on The Higher Standard, Chris sits down with longtime friend Shahab Elmi, co-founder and CEO of Cymbiotika, for a conversation that goes well beyond vitamins and supplements. From betting on himself and building a bootstrapped business into a nine-figure brand to navigating the temptations of private equity, protecting product quality and learning that success means very little if your family gets the leftovers. Shahab pulls back the curtain on what it really takes to...

Over the weekend more than 500,000 people marched across France, with cars set on fire and over 2,000 arrests. This morning French 10-year yields jumped more than 10 basis points, the CAC 40 is down about 1.7%, and France now pays more to borrow than Italy or Greece. It lands on a US market that was already jumpy: since Friday’s show the 10-year is up about 6 basis points to 5.15%, Brent is near $110, and the VIX has climbed from 16 to 18. So is France a one-day scare, or the first crack in a global bond market that’s running out of buyers? We’re going live t...

CoreWeave's bonds just hit 16% yield — that's distress territory, folks, and it's telling you everything you need to know about where the AI boom actually stands right now. The stock is down 22% this week alone, shedding nearly $10 billion in market cap, as the bond market does what the equity crowd refuses to: price in reality. We're talking about a company with $50 billion in debt, a $626 million net loss last quarter, and net interest expenses that literally exceeded its operating income — all while the Fed just hiked in September and markets spent Monday through Thursday pricing in another move at the Octo...

September CPI just printed 3.7% — hotter than economists expected — and the market is already bleeding. Gas prices are the ignition switch, but the real story is what happens next: the Fed is now caught between an economy that's too hot to cut and too fragile to hike, with JPMorgan's own strategist going on record saying raising rates right now would be "stupid." Meanwhile, rate-sensitive stocks are getting destroyed in premarket — the 10 names falling hardest are telling you exactly where the pain is spreading — and global diesel prices aren't helping, with the IEA warning of another supply squeeze through 2027. Here's what nobody's...

America’s next debt crisis isn’t hiding in the numbers. It’s hiding behind them. Credit card delinquencies are either flashing red or perfectly manageable, depending on which statistic you cherry-pick. And somehow, both are technically correct. In Episode 357, we follow the cracks spreading through student loans, subprime auto lending, buy-now-pay-later debt, and the $1.8 trillion private credit market—where Wall Street apparently believes moving risk off a balance sheet makes it disappear. From South Korea’s credit card collapse to the infamous assurances that subprime was “contained,” history offers a familiar warning: the numbers look manageable right up until they don...

AI may be the most important technology of our lifetime. That does not mean Wall Street has priced it correctly. In Episode 356, we dig into Anthropic’s reported $2 trillion ambitions, more than $500 billion in long-term compute commitments, OpenAI’s even larger promises, and 180 years of investors discovering the hard way that great technology and great investments are not the same thing. From Railway Mania and Netscape to Webvan, Cisco and WeWork, the pattern is remarkably familiar: spend enormous amounts of money today, assume tomorrow will be exponentially bigger, and try not to ask what happens if growth slows. But this...

Every great company wants loyal customers. The really great ones want believers. This week, we look at what happens when a business stops selling you a product and starts selling you an identity. From Amazon’s “Day 1” disciples to Tesla shareholders defending Elon Musk like family and OpenAI employees threatening to walk out with Sam Altman, the biggest companies in America have figured out something Wall Street can’t put on a balance sheet: tribal loyalty is incredibly valuable. But now the tribes are wearing political jerseys, CEOs are becoming symbols, tickers are becoming flags, and buying a car, drinking...

Apparently 1,200 AI agents left alone in separate sandboxes will eventually do what humans always do: find each other, form a group chat, cheat the test, and start looking for ways around the cameras. In this episode, we break down the real-world “swarm” incident, why reward hacking may matter more than Skynet fantasies, and what happens when the machines get better at hiding how they reached an answer. Then we follow the money into finance, law, AI’s growing safety tax, and an oversight system that is starting to look suspiciously like auditing before Enron taught everyone a very expensive lesson...

What if the ugliest economic decade in modern American history wasn’t just history — but a warning label? In Episode 353, we go back to 1971, when Nixon closed the gold window, slapped tariffs on imports, froze wages and prices, leaned on the Fed for easy money, and helped light the fuse on the stagflationary mess that followed. Then came the oil shock, Arthur Burns, double-digit inflation, sixteen lost years for the Dow, and eventually Paul Volcker showing up with a monetary flamethrower. Fast-forward to today: energy shock, tariffs, political pressure on the Fed, sticky inflation, a fragile labor market, and stoc...

Private equity sold itself as the smartest money in the room. Turns out, a lot of that “genius” may have just been 40 years of falling rates, cheap leverage, and somebody else willing to pay a higher multiple. We break down how the model actually works, why roughly 33,000 portfolio companies are now stuck waiting for an exit, and what happens when every leveraged buyout starts looking like an adjustable-rate mortgage that just reset. From Krispy Kreme turning the hot light into a cost center, to Toys “R” Us entering the Amazon fight buried in debt, to Red Lobster selling the building...

Silicon Valley didn’t suddenly fall in love with podcasts because everyone discovered the joys of long-form conversation. They figured out something much more valuable: if you control the pipe, you can shape the narrative. In Episode 351, Chris traces that playbook from Hearst and Murdoch to Rogan, Musk, a16z, OpenAI and TBPN—and asks the uncomfortable question behind the new media boom: are you watching an independent show, or a very expensive communications strategy with better lighting? The money can buy reach, access and influence. What it still can’t buy is trust.

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Episode 350, and apparently the milestone gift is discovering that the United States is now paying the mortgage with the credit card. Chris and Rajeil unpack Scott Bessent’s decision to supersize Treasury bond buybacks just as long-term yields hit 19-year highs and the national debt crossed $40 trillion. We go from Venice’s first bond market to the Treasury-Fed Accord, Japan’s yield-curve-control experiment, and why governments have a long, ugly history of trying to bully borrowing costs lower. Then there’s the timing: the accelerated program starts September 9, runs through November 4, and somehow manages to wrap up one day after th...

In Episode 349 of The Higher Standard, Chris breaks down why cooling CPI doesn’t mean inflation is dead, why the Fed may be walking straight into a stagflation trap, and how a weakening jobs market, rising energy costs, Japan, the yen and a geopolitical oil shock are colliding at exactly the wrong time. From the 1970s and Volcker to CPI vs. PCE, shelter inflation, owners’ equivalent rent and the “ghost” hiding inside year-over-year inflation math, this episode explains why the next inflation print may already be partially baked in—and why the Fed’s September decision is becoming a choice betwe...

Everyone is waiting for the next housing crash. Chris thinks they may be watching the wrong thing. In Episode 348, he connects the lessons of 2008 to today’s mortgage market, where major non-bank lenders are under pressure, Treasury yields keep climbing, and Japan’s fight to defend the yen could be making America’s mortgage problem worse. This isn’t a call for another housing collapse—it’s a warning that the financial system is showing cracks in places most people aren’t watching.

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In Episode 347, Chris goes solo and pulls apart one of the wildest Wall Street stories of the year: the near-collapse of Situational Awareness, the AI-focused hedge fund launched by 25-year-old prodigy Leopold Aschenbrenner. What began as a multibillion-dollar bet on the future of artificial intelligence quickly became a masterclass in concentration risk, leverage and what happens when Silicon Valley confidence runs headfirst into experienced Wall Street operators. From FTX and OpenAI to a brutal margin call, a massive portfolio sale to Ken Griffin’s Citadel and a suspiciously well-timed rebound in the very stocks that had just been crushed, Ch...

Five years, 345 episodes and one painfully empty chair later, THS enters its next era. Chris is back behind the mic with Rajeil riding shotgun, a laptop full of charts and a thesis Wall Street is not going to enjoy: the next recession may not begin with housing or the Fed—it may begin when America’s trillion-dollar AI buildout collides with cheaper, open-weight Chinese models. From market corrections and oil shocks to data-center tax breaks, Enron-style debt structures, exploding token costs, Kimi K3 and an unreleased AI agent that reportedly escaped containment, this episode asks whether the technology holding up t...

After five years, 345 episodes, countless laughs, arguments, predictions, detours and unforgettable moments, this episode marks the end of an era for The Higher Standard. Saied is stepping away from the show to begin an important new chapter in his life, and while we are incredibly proud of him, there is no pretending this is not a painful and deeply emotional moment. THS was never just a podcast… it was a friendship, a partnership and a community built one conversation at a time. To every listener who welcomed Saied into their week, supported the show and grew alongside us, thank yo...

Kevin Warsh says AI is about to make everything cheaper, which sounds incredible until you remember corporations have never met a cost savings they could not quietly turn into margin. In Episode 344, Chris and Saied break down the Fed’s shiny new task forces, the strange cast of academics, CEOs, and venture capitalists chosen to “modernize” monetary policy, and the growing fear that Washington is not fixing the inflation data so much as shopping for a model that produces a friendlier answer. From Costco getting punished for merely being excellent, to Tinder trying to manufacture growth in a country that n...

Alex Karp went on CNBC to talk about Palantir’s new Nvidia initiative, but what came out was much bigger than a partnership announcement. In this episode, Chris and Saied break down what Palantir actually does, why Gotham, Foundry, Apollo, and AIP matter, and why Karp believes the next phase of AI is not consumer chatbots — it is controlled, sovereign, mission-critical AI inside governments, militaries, banks, hospitals, factories, and critical infrastructure. The conversation becomes a larger debate over whether AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic have oversold the dream, whether enterprises are wasting money on token economics, and whether corp...

In this episode of The Higher Standard, Chris, Saied, and Rajeil break down how America’s housing affordability crisis got dragged into political theater. A bipartisan housing bill meant to address supply, zoning, institutional buyers, and long-term affordability suddenly became leverage in a fight over election legislation... but the real problem runs much deeper than Washington’s latest circus. Mortgage rates are still too high, home prices are still out of reach, wages have not kept up, and millions of Americans are being priced out before they ever get a chance to save for a down payment. The guys unpa...

America doesn’t tax wealth. It taxes people who need paychecks. In this episode, we break down Ray Madoff’s The Second Estate and the playbook behind America’s new aristocracy: buy, borrow, die. Billionaires can borrow against appreciated stock, avoid selling assets, donate shares for tax benefits, use trusts to move wealth, and die with a stepped-up basis that can erase decades of capital gains. From Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk paying zero federal income tax in certain years, to Peter Thiel turning a $2,000 Roth IRA into a $5 billion tax-free account, this isn’t tax evasion. It’s the system...

Inflation is back at 4.2%, the Fed is suddenly looking less “patient” and more “are we doing this again?," mortgage rates are flirting with the wrong side of uncomfortable, and the bond market is basically standing in the corner whispering, “I told you so.” In this episode, Chris, Saied and Rajeil break down the latest CPI print, why 7% mortgage rates may not be off the table, how today’s inflation setup is starting to rhyme a little too hard with the 1970s, and why the market is still partying like AI, SpaceX, and IPO hype can solve every macro problem. Spoiler: the...

The economy is not crashing. It is freezing. In this episode of The Higher Standard, Chris and Saied break down the Fed’s Beige Book, a bifurcated consumer, sticky inflation, margin-squeezed businesses, and a labor market that has become low-hire, low-fire. Then the conversation turns to the real insanity: Treasury buybacks, Bitcoin liquidations, Ethereum weakness, gold replacing U.S. Treasuries as the world’s top reserve asset, and SpaceX preparing for a historic IPO at a $1.77 trillion valuation. The question is simple: are we watching the next great technological leap forward, or the biggest liquidity-driven rug pull of all time...

In this episode of The Higher Standard, Chris and Saied dive headfirst into the wildest S-1 filing Wall Street may have ever seen: SpaceX, Starlink, XAI, Mars colonies, asteroid mining, lunar economies, data centers in space, and Elon Musk casually trying to justify a $28.5 trillion total addressable market like he’s ordering lunch. The guys break down whether this is a visionary master plan to make humanity multi-planetary or a beautifully packaged liquidity event with rockets, buzzwords, and enough “AI” mentions to make Nvidia blush. From the insane valuation math to the XAI gamble, the class structure, the retail invest...

AI is no longer just helping you write emails or clean up spreadsheets; it is watching, learning and preparing to do the job itself. In this episode, Chris and Saied break down Zuckerberg’s stunning explanation of employee-trained AI, the corporate obsession with cutting headcount in the name of “efficiency,” Elon Musk’s robot economy and the trillions in wages suddenly sitting in the crosshairs. Add a labor market nobody fully trusts and a bond market flashing warnings, and one question remains: when productivity explodes, who still gets a paycheck?

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This week on The Higher Standard, we break down hotter inflation, Warsh’s awkward Fed handoff, housing cracks, rising delinquencies, and why “resilient economy” may be the new “transitory.” Then we get into the big one: AI may be destroying the moat that terminal valuations are built on. If innovation moves so fast that no company can confidently project cash flows five to ten years out, venture capital math starts looking less like investing and more like praying with a spreadsheet. Also, apologies in advance: we had to silence the Big Boi interview with Kid Cudi due to a copyright...

This week on The Higher Standard, Rajeil was out, Slim was “furloughed,” and Chris and Saied accidentally stumbled into one of the biggest questions nobody in Washington wants to answer: what happens when the government is funded by workers, but the future is built to need fewer of them? Using Chamath’s Joe Rogan appearance as the spark, the guys break down why W-2 income gets treated like an ATM for the federal government while corporations, capital gains, lobbyists, and the ownership class keep playing by a very different rulebook. From AI replacing entry-level white-collar jobs to corporate profits hittin...

In Episode 334 of The Higher Standard, Chris and Saied give Jerome “Transitory” Powell the only farewell THS knows how: part tribute, part roast, part macro autopsy. From his final FOMC press conference and the fight over Fed independence to inflation, oil shocks, AI job losses, recession-level consumer pain, credit card delinquencies, and an overcooked stock market, this episode breaks down why the economy feels broken even while the suits keep calling it “resilient.” Powell may be leaving the mic, but the money printer’s legacy is still sitting on America’s balance sheet.

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Chris, Saied and Rajeil dive headfirst into the weirdest corner of the modern economy, where the next Fed chair sounds like a political hostage negotiation, AI is either the greatest productivity boom in history or the most expensive layoff machine ever built, private credit is quietly turning banks into shadow-bank Uber drivers, and crypto keeps pretending it’s financial freedom while throwing money at Washington. From Kevin Warsh and Fed independence to AI hype, corporate cost-cutting, Bitcoin mythology, Epstein-adjacent crypto lore, and the political machine behind digital assets, this episode asks the question nobody in power wants to answer: ar...

This week on The Higher Standard, Chris, Saied and Rajeel do what the internet refuses to do: have a real conversation without immediately joining a cult. From political tribalism and social media brain rot to stagflation, AI pivots and the absolute insanity of a dead shoe company becoming an “AI infrastructure” play, this episode is a masterclass in spotting the hustle before it spots you. Along the way, the guys unpack why everything feels fake, why people feel stuck, and why modern life somehow includes paying for attention, hype and digital nonsense dressed up as opportunity. Equal parts sharp, funn...

Episode 331 is classic The Higher Standard chaos with a purpose: Chris, Saied and Rajeil take a world that feels like it is being held together by ceasefire headlines, oil volatility and pure market delusion, then translate it into plain English for the people actually paying the price. They unpack the Fed getting boxed in by sticky inflation, war driven energy shocks and a market still partying like rate cuts are around the corner, while housing stays brutally unaffordable and AI quietly starts showing up in real job losses. It is equal parts macro reality check and group chat energy...

Sheriff Chad Bianco pulled up and did not waste a second pretending California’s problems are mysterious. In this special edition of The Higher Standard, we get into crime, chaos, Sacramento dysfunction, runaway regulation, affordability getting absolutely body slammed, and why so many Californians feel like the state they loved is slipping through their fingers. Sheriff Bianco breaks down how public safety got kneecapped, why the cost of living feels like legalized assault, and what it actually takes to turn around a state that somehow has perfect weather and terrible management. It is part policy, part reality check, and pa...

This episode of The Higher Standard goes full chaos mode in the best way possible, as Chris, Saied, and Rajeil unpack the terrifyingly exciting reality that AI is no longer just a productivity tool, it is a full blown money printer for the bold, the curious, and occasionally the morally flexible. From two man companies generating hundreds of millions in revenue to the rise of AI powered business models that could completely rewrite how wealth is built, the guys explore where the opportunity is real, where the ethics get murky, and why this technology is starting to feel less...

In this episode of The Higher Standard, Chris, Saied and Rajeil break down a market that feels more like a casino than a pricing mechanism, from Trump-driven headline volatility and bond market warning signs to rising oil risks, shaky Fed cut expectations, and why the stock market may be ignoring the bigger problem entirely. They dig into the growing disconnect between equities and Treasuries, the real inflation threat hiding in energy, the possibility that the Fed may be forced to hike instead of cut, and why housing, flipping, and rate-sensitive assets are all flashing caution signs. Along the way...

Jerome Powell hit pause, but the economy definitely didn’t. In Episode 327, Chris and Saied break down a Fed that still looks stubbornly out of step with reality, a private credit market flashing louder warning signs than most of Wall Street wants to admit, and fresh housing data that makes the affordability crisis impossible to spin away. From rising default rates and redemption freezes in private credit to oil shock risk, sticky inflation, AI-driven job disruption, and a market still clinging to rate-cut fantasies, this episode is a sharp, funny, and brutally honest look at an economy being propped up...

This episode is what happens when the economy shows up looking polished, but the mascara is running. Chris, Saied, and Rajeel break down the slow-motion mess unfolding across jobs, housing, private credit, and the Fed, while war, oil, and rate pressure lurk in the background like a tab nobody wants to pick up. It’s part macro breakdown, part group therapy, part comedy special... and somehow still one of the clearest explanations of why everything feels like it’s breaking at once.

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Episode 325 is what happens when a jobs report, crypto’s glow-up, Fed-chair musical chairs, and a live geopolitical powder keg all walk into the same podcast and nobody leaves with lower blood pressure. Chris and Saied tear into the bizarre disconnect between war headlines and market optimism, question whether Wall Street has confused “priced in” with “blindfolded,” break down oil, rates, and why replacing Powell with Warsh is a lot messier when inflation and recession risk are both lurking in the room, and still find time to laugh their way through the chaos like only THS can. In other words: a l...

AI isn’t coming “eventually.” It’s coming this year... and the biggest scam is that you’re training the model that replaces you every time you use it. We break down Nvidia’s blowout quarter and why the market still shrugged, then zoom out to the darker part: the circular financing and “investment” theater where Big Tech writes checks to OpenAI… and OpenAI hands it right back as infrastructure spend. We talk the real endgame (jobs → AGI → UBI → asset owners win), and we close with the only sane answer: own assets, learn agentic AI, and build yourself into the part of the system t...