As Chief Investment Strategist for Alhambra Investment Partners, Jeff directs the day-to-day investment processes and spearheads the investment research efforts while providing close contact to Alhambra’s client base.
Jeff joined Atlantic Capital Management, Inc., in Buffalo, NY, as an intern while completing studies at Canisius College. After graduating in 1996 with a Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Jeff took over the operations of that firm while adding to the portfolio management and stock research process.
In 2000, Jeff moved to West Palm Beach to join Tom Nolan with Atlantic Capital Management of Florida, Inc. During the early part of the 2000′s he began to develop the research capability that ACM is known for. As part of the portfolio management team, Jeff was an integral part in growing ACM and building the comprehensive research/management services, and then turning that investment research into outstanding investment performance.
As part of that research effort, Jeff authored and published numerous in-depth investment reports that ran contrary to established opinion. In the near year and a half run-up to the panic in 2008, Jeff analyzed and reported on the deteriorating state of the economy and markets. In early 2009, while conventional wisdom focused on near-perpetual gloom, his next series of reports were provided insight into the formative ending process of the economic contraction and a comprehensive review of factors that were leading to the market’s resurrection.
In 2012, after the merger between ACM and Alhambra Investment Partners, Jeff came on board Alhambra as Chief Investment Strategist.
Currently, Jeff is published nationally at RealClearMarkets, ZeroHedge, Minyanville and Yahoo!Finance.
Episode Notes:
Narrator  This is The Norris Group’s real estate investor radio show, the award-winning show dedicated to thought leaders shaping the real estate industry and local experts revealing their insider tips to succeed in an ever-changing real estate market hosted by author, investor and hard money lender, Bruce Norris.
Bruce Norris  Are you worried about the level of debt that’s accumulating to accomplish almost what seems to be like a breakeven GDP?
Jeff Snider  Yeah, it’s, debt is an enormous problem. It’s an exceptionally enormous problem. But it’s not a problem for today and that’s, that’s a hard thing to say. And it’s a hard thing for people to accept, and it’s really one of the reasons why we have this deflationary environment and begin with because, for various reasons, the, the way, the primary way that the, this euro dollar global US dollar system works is through something called Repo, the Repurchase Agreements, which are collateralized lending. And so we’ve given primacy to that collateral and its importance in liquidity and monetary supply throughout the entire world, which means we need that collateral without that collateral, the system breaks down, which is really what happened in 2008 by the way, it was a collateral shortage, which is one reason why the Fed couldn’t fix it. But you know, not getting into that, when you have a collateral shortage, what happens is essentially everybody gets herded into the best forms of collateral. And unfortunately, US government debt is consists of the best form of collateral. So, in times of deflation and collateral scarcity, guess what everybody wants to own. The one thing that they probably shouldn’t long term because we all know the US government is the brokest institution has human, human beings ever conceived. But as I said, that’s a tomorrow problem. The today problem is I need collateral, US government, US Treasury bonds, and really US Treasury bills are the best form of collateral. So, their value are made, that value in that debt is maintained by this monetary insufficiency. It’s almost a paradox in its, in and of itself, right? Because the more that the government debt is, is utilized and valued in this collateral form of, collateralized form of lending this necessary process in the global eurodollar system, the more the US government can take advantage of those prices, and issue more and more debt. And of course, that doesn’t solve the economic equation, which just simply means we’re going to have more deflation, lack of, lack of economic growth, and therefore more need, or more, at least, more more, it’s going to result in more borrowing by the federal government to begin with, if fit this perfectly describes the last dozen years or so since the ARRA, we’ve gone into this cycle where we can’t break out of it.
Bruce Norris  Take me through a Repo transaction.
Jeff Snider  It’s simply…
Bruce Norris  There’s two sides of it.
Jeff Snider  Yes.
Bruce Norris  Okay.
Jeff Snider  You know, simple unsecured transaction, like federal funds is, you know, you’re a bank, I’m a bank, I lend you cash overnight, you pay it back, you pay me back tomorrow, with principal plus a little bit of interest, that’s all. And we do that because we know each other, we’re in the marketplace all the time. So, that’s an unsecured transaction. And before 2007, there was a lot of that kind of activity that went on, obviously, you can see, you know, financial crisis, why, why banks would not want to do that as much afterward. But even before 2007, the alternative to that is something called Repo. Repo is nothing more than, you want to borrow cash from me, but I don’t know who you are, I need some kind of security or collateral.
Bruce Norris  Right.
Jeff Snider  So, you have some kind of security collateral that you post to me and if you default on the cash loan in the morning, I seize your collateral and I sell it, that’s all it is. So, that’s a Repo transaction,
Bruce Norris  Is there, are there times when somebody comes to the door and says, I have this as an asset, and the other side goes, we don’t loan on that?
Jeff Snider  Absolutely. And that’s really kind of where it gets into big problems. Because what happens is, if you say you have a really crappy junk bond, a junk corporate bond, from a really low quality issuer, you go into the Repo market, the Repo market will say, ‘yeah, I’ll take that as collateral, but with a huge haircut,’ which means a huge markdown in price.
Bruce Norris  Right.
Jeff Snider  So, you say, ‘Well, I don’t want to use the junk bond, because I’m gonna have to pay that huge markdown, I’m gonna have to use a lot more collateral, I’m going to knock on the door of a money dealer. And I’m going to exchange my collateral for a US Treasury. So, I’m going to essentially borrow a US Treasury from a bank. And then I’m going to go into the Repo market.’ As far as the repo market goes, as far as I know, you’re coming to me with a US Treasury. So, we’re going to do a repo trade on us and the best possible terms, even though that’s not your Treasury that you own, you’ve borrowed it from a bank. And really underpinning this whole process is real, crappy collateral. So, we have what looks like good collateral being supported by crappy collateral. Now you do that a couple 100,000 times you, this is called reuse and re pledging rehypothecation. You do that quite a lot and suddenly the collateral stream becomes very important to the function, the monetary function of the overall system. If we have a collateral problem, what happens if, if the bank that you’re borrowing the Treasury from suddenly says, I don’t like this junk that you’re posting to me to do to borrow my Treasury, give me my Treasury back, which you got to give the Treasury back, which means you can’t go in the repo market tomorrow, which is going to cause all sorts of problems to you, because you’re highly, highly leveraged, you don’t have any cash margin for this kind of thing. So, either you’re going to have to find a replacement Treasury at whatever price you can secure or you’re going to have to start selling off your assets, you have to liquidate your assets or whatever price you can get. So, you can see lack of collateral causes all sorts of problems, including increasing the price of the good forms of collateral. And when the, when the these collateral scarcity periods get really, really cute that’s when you see US Treasury prices, especially bill prices go up in sustained fashion, you know, that’s when you see real rallies in the Treasury market, when there’s a collateral shortage.
Bruce Norris  Okay.
Jeff Snider  And of course, that’s, you know, the deflationary implications that go along with.
Bruce Norris  Let’s, let’s try to build a picture of what causes deflation, and maybe there’s some new pieces to it, like AI and things like that. So, first of all, our current demographics is that deflationary?
Jeff Snider  I don’t think it’s necessarily deflationary. I understand. I mean, to me, it’s sort of economic theory, going way, way, way, way back. But I think there are periods in time where, you know, you can look at and say, it’s not necessarily a deflationary outcome, it’s certainly not it’s not helpful. I don’t think it’s necessarily a, a foregone conclusion.
Bruce Norris  What about the labor participation rate?
Jeff Snider  That’s hugely deflationary. And that, to me is a macro factor, which is, you know, it’s not that there’s rigidities in the labor system. You know, Americans are too lazy. They’re too drug addicted, baby boomers, all that kind of I don’t believe that at all. I think what’s happened is that, because of the deflationary environment where the US economy hasn’t really grown that well, since 2008. Most people are saying, it’s not worth it for me to even look for a job because I know there isn’t one available at the rate I want to get paid. And it’s also, also about wages, right? Companies in a low growth environment aren’t able to pay the market clearing wage. And so it’s a participation problem is a symptom of this overall deflation, and it contributes to it because it creates a some massive amount of hidden macro slack in the labor pool.
Bruce Norris  Okay.
Jeff Snider  Which has only gotten worse since last year, the participation rate drops precipitously, and it’s only coming about halfway back. So, as bad as it was before COVID, in the 2020 recession, so far, it’s maintaining itself at 61.5 – 61.6, which is not a good number, that’s a really low number.
Bruce Norris  Okay, things like inventions, technology AI that play a role in deflation. And is that just a trend that’s going to get more aggressive?
Jeff Snider  Productive deflation like that, I mean, that’s what capitalism does. That’s rising living standards, social progress. And so the backbone of economic progress, which becomes inflationary, is that productive deflation, as we adopt new innovative ideas that increase the efficiency in the the playability, the overall economic system, we would expect that to contribute to growth not inhibited. So yeah, that kind of thing is going on, it’s always going on. And we can see I mean, the price of technology goes down all you know all the time. However, what I think what’s happening is that we’re not taking advantage of innovations because of this monetary economic insufficiency. We’re not really investing in the, in those types of innovations and technologies because we can’t, the system is working, is not working is broken down. We can’t take advantage of these things at the same rate we used to, and that’s really, that’s really all comes back to that that deflationary component, which is a monetary macro. deflation, not necessarily productive deflation.
Bruce Norris  Okay. Things like automatic cars, you know, driving cars, things like that, is that, obviously, that’s a progression. But is that deflationary, like if you take out truck drivers, for instance?
Jeff Snider  Absolutely. I mean, go back 100 years, if you lived in New York City, and you walked in any tall building, you didn’t press a button on an elevator, you talk to the person who did it, who do move the elevator manually. We don’t have elevator operators anymore. We don’t we, don’t lament the fact that they’re gone. So, but the problem is what we went through these transformations, big transformations and a lot of different time. I mean, in the 19th century, the start of the 19th century, American workers were by and large agricultural.
Bruce Norris  Right.
Jeff Snider  At the end of the 19th century, there were hardly any agricultural workers left. We didn’t you know, I mean, that was a messy process, a lot of upheaval and things like that. But by and large, those agricultural workers moved into industrial jobs because there was industrial jobs. There was economic growth, that and, that supported that transformation. I think what’s happening now is, especially since 2007, 2008, is that we do have some of those transformation pressures, you know, the fear of the robot, for example.
Bruce Norris  Right.
Jeff Snider  But we don’t have the jobs available, the new jobs available to absorb those kinds of processes. And so that gives, gives a lot of power to and amplifies these fears. But it’s not a, it’s not really you shouldn’t be fearing the robot taking over, you should be instead, really upset about the fact there isn’t a job ready available for you, because you’re now freed up to do something else. Because truck drivers will be freed up to do something else, other than driving a truck, that’s really the secret to economic progress in advance is that, you know, you used to toil away, you know, 18 hours a day in a farm for very little pay, then all sudden, you got a factory job to our modern year that didn’t sound like much of an improvement. But it really was it was a major step toward the middle class. You know, as long as there was jobs available for to take advantage of these technological progresses and productive deflationary processes. It kind of worked again, it was messy. It was you know, a lot of people migrations and things like that, by and large it was, it not only did it work, it was enormously successful, we transform society from, you know, subsistence existence into a modern industrial, consumer driven wealthy state. And now what it’s really what comes next. Okay, the fact that we don’t have a labor market, that’s sufficient to really take advantage of it.
Bruce Norris  Do you expect there to be a positive outcome from what we have to now go through, I would say there’s going to be uphill, up people, but you feel like, we’re gonna land in a positive square at some point,
Jeff Snider  At some point. And that’s really the key, you know, it’s it’s been 14 years already, which is way longer than it ever should have been. But you know, these things are not permanent, eventually, you know, human beings will find a success, human beings will find a way to break out of their problems, even, you know, historically speaking that, yes, economic prolonged periods of economic, you know, recession or depression, whatever you want to call it, for lack of a better term. They do happen, but they don’t last forever. So, really, it’s about, you know, when does this one end? And what does it look like when we get into the next real legitimate upturn. And I think it can be enormously profitable, enormously opportunistic for everybody, you know, rising tide lifts all boats, it’s really about solving this deflationary problem that we’re currently stuck with, and getting it out into the open and fixing it. And then watching everything finally, you know, we’ve got a decade and a half already of pent up demand and really investment, legitimate investments, I’m talking about malinvestment into all the sorts of financial products and things like that, but legitimate investment that’s penned up ready to go and some take advantage of a lot of technological innovation that we really haven’t, we’ve really scratched the surface with.
Bruce Norris  So, these advances are going to eliminate jobs, but you feel confident there’ll be another group of jobs that emerge from whatever’s next. Is that accurate?
Jeff Snider  Yes.
Bruce Norris  Okay.
Jeff Snider  Yes. And that’s, that’s really, that’s kind of the process. It’s, like I said, it’s not necessarily a straightforward process, it tends to be messy. I mean, see, if you’re one of the one of the, if you’re a truck driver, for example, and your job is eliminated, you’re not going to feel too great about this.
Bruce Norris  Yeah, that’s messy.
Jeff Snider  No, no, hey, I grew up in the rust belt. So, I saw what happened with all those industrial jobs just kind of disappeared. And we’re supposed to just be happy that they all went to Vietnam and China. No, I mean, again, it’s, it’s not a, it’s not a it’s not a straightforward, you know, it’s not a straightforward process where everybody’s happy with it. But by and large, if it worked the way it was supposed to work, then we would, you know, that’s where economic progress as a whole in general comes from. And that’s small comfort to the person who is displaced. It’s like, ‘Hey, you got to sacrifice your job, so that the quote unquote, greater good can can can advance and, you know, everybody else can have a much better future, but you have to change and you have to learn some other, other career’. But you know, that’s the way economics work. That’s the way economic progress since the Industrial Revolution showed up. That’s the way it’s been.
Bruce Norris  What do you view interest rates doing over the next couple years?
Jeff Snider  I think they’re going lower and lower and lower and I would not be surprised if at some point we see negative Treasury yields. I outside of the bills, you’ve already seen bill yields go negative at certain times. For those reasons I talked talked about, you know, collateral and shortage and things like that. But I think it would, I would not be surprised to see some of the note yields go negative at some point.
Bruce Norris  Well, okay.
Jeff Snider  You know, you’ve mentioned quite a few times the bond market. So, is the bond market, a collective of very bright people? I mean, in other words, they’re not one guy going, Okay, this is what’s going to happen. So, why is the bond market most often correct in direction pointing. Yeah, I know. It’s, it’s sort of like the stark disconnect. Right? I just talked about how happy I am about the future. But you know, how do we get there, right? I mean, what’s that’s really the issue here is how do we get from A to B? Where A is really bad. It’s this this this deflationary environment, really the worst case is that we stay, stay with it for a prolonged even more, you know, to me almost another crash or crisis would be preferable because it might get people to start looking in the right place and say, let’s fix this now. Whereas what we have now, most people don’t really know what’s going on. In fact, if I think if you ask most people, especially before 2020, they would tell you what the hell you’re talking. I mean, what are you talking about? The economy’s booming. Have you seen the unemployment rate? It’s the 50-year low. What do you mean that? What do you mean, we’re in a deflationary period where things aren’t good, it’s very hard to get people to connect all these dots starting with the fact that they don’t know there’s a problem. And that’s really the issue. When you go back to what I described as a monetary system, the Euro dollar system, if a bank centered system where we’re not trading actual currency, we’re trading bank liabilities and assets back and forth, we described one in our simple repo example. That’s what money is. So, the bond market is essentially these banks who do the money. They’re the ones with the printing press, telling you what they’re doing. So, if the people who are doing the money are saying, I’m risk averse, I’m not really seeing the inflation, we should probably listen to that signal. I’m not saying we should do we need to look around for corroboration and other markets and other things. But if the monetary system itself could talk to you and tell you, deflation, disinflation, you would probably want to listen to that. So, that’s what we’re really talking about. We look at Euro curves and money curves and things like that. The investors in those bond markets investor in eurodollar, futures are interest rate swaps, or currency swaps, that is the monetary system itself, telling you what the monetary system is doing. That’s why, number one, the bond market has an enviable rather than Jay Powell and the Federal Reserve poor track record. And number two, it’s been consistent. That tells you when, when monetary pressures go up, we can expect these deflationary symptoms to arise and they do consistently. So, that’s why we look at the bond market because by and large, it’s the monetary system telling you what it’s doing in real time.
Bruce Norris  What, what’s interesting about what happened, what’s happening to yields, I just give you an example. So, when interest rates went to 17%, for mortgage rates, in 1980, so from 75 to 80, interest rates over doubled seven and a half to 17.
Jeff Snider  Yep.
Bruce Norris  That journey also took prices up by 300%. So when people tell me when well, rising interest rates kill real estate, you know, that’s why I like chart to go, Well, wait a minute. That’s not always true. But here’s the problem. Now, there’s an affordability that’s repetitive where there becomes a problem for I’ll just speak California. So, we’re approaching that affordability breaking point where prices basically stopped accelerating. The problem is, we were at 17% in 1980, when that occurred, and we’re in the twos when it might occur now, right? So, how do you go forward whenever you normalize interest rate to whatever timeframe that is? The debt on the real estate, if it’s a 2%, or something, and the new debt is got to be at five or six, which is not an outrageous interest rate historically?
Jeff Snider  I know it sounds like…
Bruce Norris Oh, yeah. Oh, my God, I do a lot of speaking and people were, you know, they’ll raise their hand. You know, I’m hesitating to refi because interest rates are three and a quarter. You know what I’m just like, Wow. You know…
Jeff Snider  Think how lucky you are?
Bruce Norris  Yeah, take a longer chart before you say that, you know, you’re you’re looking at a six month chart and are unhappy. But I guess what I’m concerned about is when interest rates normalize, because they know you’re going to have…
Jeff Snider  Oh, well, at some point, absolutely.
Bruce Norris  Then real estate is used up all of the upside for a really fairly long period of time. Now, what’s your thought about? Because…
Jeff Snider  Bruce, if you look, I’ll make a little bit of a counter argument to that. Because is essentially when interest rates normalize and normalize is probably you know, not the right term. But his interest rates get out of this distant disinflation deflationary environment, it gets to something more recognizable as normal, you know, go back to the 1990s for example, where were interest rates in the 90s. You know, they’re about 567 percent short run. And so, mortgage rates were eight, maybe 9, 10 10%, somewhere in there. That was good. That was an environment with legitimate economic growth, pretty much all around the world. Everybody was doing very well. And that’s what we want to see. We want to see interest rates rise in the bond market, because that’s the signal, that’s the monetary system telling you, we’re going into a period where economic growth is legitimate economic growth. And if we get into a robust economic growth paradigm, maybe that softens the blow of the rise in interest rates. In fact, that’s really what we expect to happen, not just specifically in real estate, but in all sorts of other, you know, leverage categories, like, you know, productive investment companies borrowing money, in a macro environment is conducive to that kind of Prop, that thing paying off, companies shouldn’t necessarily, you know, balk at higher interest rates, because they would be looking at the long run opportunity of that productive investment. I know, it’s a little bit different in real estate. But a really roaring economic system could, could actually cushion the blow to rising rates in the real estate environment, because you would have more people involved in real estate. And I think that’s one of the problems over the last, especially since the housing busts in 2008, nine and 10 is that the real estate sector has sort of been sort of been walled off from a large portion of the population who can’t get a mortgage, even if they tried. So, if you have a real economic growth situation, we could bring a lot more people back into the real estate market, and maybe all these things work in the markets favor.
Bruce Norris  Sure! Okay.
Jeff Snider  Now, that’s I may sound like threading the needle. But that’s sort of really what we want what we expect to happen by and large, that’s really the the idea behind rising interest rates and economic growth. And I think it’s worth pointing out too, maybe outside of real estate investors, most people have, they have interest rates upside down. They think low rates or stimulus and high rates are, you know, some form of restriction when what you just said is absolutely true, rates were double digits and better in the 1970s, during the Great inflation, whereas low rates today don’t signal stimulus, they signal tight money. And that’s what Milton Friedman called the interest rate fallacy, because historically speaking, it’s exactly the opposite the way you’re taught, we’re all taught to believe the Fed controls interest rates and raises and lower them, when that’s not true, the bond market the monetary system does. And if the bond market is buying safe and liquid instruments, what does that tell you how to liquidity environment into which they’re buying those instruments? It’s exactly backwards. So, if we see a normalization of interest rates, that will tell us a loosening of money. Therefore, economic prospects go way, way up.
Bruce Norris  So, your, your cost of your mortgage and interest rate probably gets countered by your wages went up?
Jeff Snider  Yes, not just your wage, but your neighbor’s wage, who hasn’t been working in 15 years? Also, he’s got a job. That’s awesome. I mean, that’s, that’s the idea. And it’s, you know, if we can paint ideal scenarios, all we want, how realistic is that kind of a thing? I think it’s I in my opinion, I think that’s probably a very realistic scenario. But I, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a complicated process, and it’s always messy, and things are miss time. And sort of, in the long run, what does it look like? And that’s, that’s really the problem.
Bruce Norris  So, if you’re, if you’re borrowing money on your real estate, now, it seems like you’re basically doing it for free, if you’re going forward and having some inflation of that. So that’s very interesting. Well, I think I have asked everything, I really appreciate your input. It’s not a subject that I’m an expert on, Jeff. And I’ve listened to your podcast many times. And I, I’ve enjoyed them in it. It just kind of spurred this interview, because I thought I just watched one a couple nights ago. And then you you brought up the the euro dollar system, and I thought, wow, I am not familiar with that. And and I just found that very interesting.
Jeff Snider  But it’s not something that you’re allowed to talk about in mainstream circles, because it’s a topic that’s verboten. You were supposed to believe that the Federal Reserve prints money, end of story, nothing else, you know, that’s what QE is QE supposed to be money printing, and it’s not. And when you tell people that they’re like, wait a minute, everybody says it’s money printing, and then you started to get into the background of discussion of what is actually money. It just, it’s so counterintuitive, it’s so contradictory that a lot of people have trouble accepting it. And that’s why I usually bring up the scholarship or hide it, which is, if you listen to these central bankers talk through your Alan Greenspan, in particular, he admits to all of these things. He said in June of 2000, for example, that inflation is always a monetary phenomenon. We can’t define money. So, we’re kind of you know, we’re kind of really flying blind here. And it shows I mean, when you really get even you looked at when you look at 2008-2009 says this global financial crisis, the only way you can really explain it, explain how it was global. Is this monetary system the federalism plugged into because that’s really what it, when you look at it, that’s what really happened. And all these other interesting things like collateral, they play the central role, not the Fed and its quantitative easing stuff.
Bruce Norris  Alright. Thanks.
Joey Romero  Jeff can ask a question?
Jeff Snider  Absolutely.
Joey Romero  Really quick. You talk about in history, you know, this situation, and then this happened to fix it, this situation and then this happened, fix it. Is there possibly this doesn’t get fixed?
Jeff Snider  I don’t see that. I think that. I mean, it could take a long time, already 14 years, and we haven’t really made much progress. I mean, there are there is actually some progress for example, if you look at mainstream scholarship from the ECB, for, they have started to take a look at collateral and these what they call secured financing transactions SFTs. So, I mean, there is slow but steady progress. I mean, just this year, the Federal Reserve in its FOMC statement said, Is it a sort of vague nod and cryptic nod the collateral, there are times when you have money market breakdowns, even though our reserves are sufficient, or over abundant, or whatever they want to call it. So, there’s, you know, it’s taken a lot of time for people in even in these these positions of authority, who have a vested interest, to not look at the stuff that they are actually investigating. So, even though progress has been very, very, very slow, it is being made even now. So, there is some reason to believe that at some point, even these idiots can figure it out. And maybe finally, you know, lead to some kind of constructive solution. But I believe that that’s the case. However, I think there’s another way that this could, “be fixed”, which is probably when I will we want, where we go further and further into social and political fragmentation, which leads to we’re just going to scrap the system start over with something else, which is entirely dangerous, but also entirely possible. So, I don’t I don’t think this this kind of condition can go on forever. And I think there’s, you know, I don’t wanna make it sound like there’s only two different options. It’s a binary tree, right? It’s either really bad or really good. You know, there’s any number of ranges in between. But that’s, I think we’re getting toward that, the point where becomes untenable and something has to happen.
Joey Romero  Is there somebody that you look to, or a voice that you respect that, you know, is usually on the, you know, on the cutting edge, or, or usually gets this right?
Jeff Snider  There’s really not, that, that’s, you know, that’s why I’ve, in the last year, of course, with with crypto prices going through the roof, people are starting to talk about digital assets and digital currency and defy and all these other things. I think that’s really where we’re going. I think those are the answers to this problem. And I think the problem with that is the investors who are piling into crypto are doing it for the wrong reasons. They’re doing it because they think the feds printing money the dollar is gonna go to zero. That’s certainly the position of Bitcoin maximalist to believe the Fed has screwed everything up and that’s really what’s going to happen. I don’t think that’s what’s really going on in digital crypto, either. They’re taking advantage of the opportunity presented to them by this inelastic deflationary monetary shortage system, where you know, El Salvador is a perfect example. El Salvador’s, has $1 probably can’t get enough dollars. So, they’ve said, let’s try Bitcoin. So, that’s I think that’s what’s really going on in crypto is it’s it’s, it’s pushing its way into this monetary shortage deflationary situation, even though the people who are buying it as investors are praying for the inflationary wrong reasons. So, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s kind of a disk. But I think, you know, the, the technology that we’re at least the potential for digital currencies is there, that it could actually provide an elegant solution to the situation that we’re in. So, there’s, you know, that’s another reason to be optimistic about the future is that even if we don’t realize it, there are very smart people working on solutions, even if those smart people don’t necessarily realize what they’re really doing, either.
Bruce Norris  Or, you know, the general gentlemen, Raul Paul.
Jeff Snider  Yes.
Bruce Norris  Yeah. I’ve had the opportunity to interview him. He’s very interesting, man. I, I respect what he’s, what he’s done with the education space, for sure. And I and you’ve been interviewed on the show, right?
Jeff Snider  I’ve been on Real Vision several times.
Bruce Norris  Yeah.
Jeff Snider  Several years. I was one of the first guests actually, I think way back, you know, five years ago.
Bruce Norris  That’s great. All right. Yeah.
Jeff Snider  No, you know, that’s it’s another. I think that what Raul had done with Real Vision is an example of what we’re talking about here. It may unappreciated innovation, just you know, I’ll be brief here. What essentially saw was that, you know, CNBC, Bloomberg channels, they had to fill content 24 hours a day, and it was essentially throwaway content. And so, the quality of the content got down to throw away content. What he said was, we don’t have to fill a 24 hour day, we’ll just produce really good content and make it available all the time. And it sounds like such a simple thing. But yeah, he was kind of the first guy to put these two things together. And it’s, I think that’s the model of everybody’s working. I mean, you look at the way people consume entertainment now there’s a lot of people don’t have any don’t even have television, they just watch YouTube clips, for example. So, we’re moving in that direction. And that’s a positive direction. That’s, you know, maybe unappreciated, and I think not taken advantage of because The environment behind it.
Bruce Norris  All right, well, Jeff, it was a pleasure to meet you and thank you for taking time of of your day to do this interview. I appreciate very much.
Jeff Snider  Oh, anytime, Bruce.
Joey Romero  Thank you.
Bruce Norris  Thank you, Jeff
Narrator  For more information on hard money, loans and upcoming events with The Norris Group, check out thenorrisgroup.com. For information on passive investing with trust deeds, visit tngtrustdeeds.com.
Aaron Norris  The Norris Group originates and services loans in California and Florida under California DRE License 01219911, Florida Mortgage Lender License 1577, and NMLS License 1623669. For more information on hard money lending, go www.thenorrisgroup.com and click the Hard Money tab.