Antitrust Lawsuits, Bitcoin, & Interest Rates With Jeremy Lakosh

About this episode

Jeremy Lakosh, a Seeking Alpha financial writer and retirement-community CEO, returns to break down the Fed's surprise 50-basis-point rate cut, arguing the real story isn't the cut itself but the Fed's forward guidance of an additional 225 bps of cuts over 18 months — a "tossup moment" that could swing either toward reignited inflation or accelerated stimulus. The conversation moves through China's aggressive stimulus response (mortgage rate cuts, reserve requirement reductions, Treasury sell-offs) as a reaction to a weakening yuan, the ECB's parallel cuts, and a sharp US-vs-Europe contrast on inflation tolerance tied to political philosophy. Vance and Lakosh build a sustained institutional-capture argument: DOJ/FTC antitrust actions (Visa, Capri-Tapestry) are framed not as consumer protection but as government-created bureaucratic moats that produce "cartels" in health insurance, electronic medical records, and other regulated industries — with Lakosh sharing a visceral personal anecdote about hospital record-siloing during his son's RSV hospitalization. The back half covers Bitcoin market structure: Operation Choke Point's crackdown on Silvergate Bank (which Lakosh and Vance argue was solvent and fully reserved, unlike SVB), the emergence of Bitcoin ETF options trading as a mechanism to bring institutional capital into Bitcoin, and the Japanese yen carry-trade unwind that briefly crashed global equity markets in August 2024. The episode closes with Lakosh's two key forward-looking economic indicators: US unemployment rate thresholds that would trigger more aggressive Fed cuts, and the "bid-to-cover" ratio on Treasury auctions as a long-term debt-sustainability warning signal.

“There is no such thing as a natural monopoly. The only time you ever get a monopoly is when you have some sort of regulatory body that says, hey, we're gonna control how you can do business... The only thing the DOJ is doing is policing a problem that they created.”

“The Fed said last week was that they're gonna reduce the Fed funds rate by an additional 225 basis points over the next 18 months... they believe the net neutral interest rate in our economy is just under 3%... that's where I have a little bit of skepticism regards to this rate cut path.”

“Investors were borrowing Japanese yen and taking those proceeds and buying stocks with them... then the central bank came along and raised 25 basis points... that trade unwound, investors sold a ton of Japanese equities... the Japanese market dropped 13% in one day.”

Key moments

• ~72%: The core institutional thesis that all durable monopolies/cartels are government-created via regulatory barriers, not free-market outcomes.
• ~92%: Detailed explanation of the Japanese yen carry-trade unwind that crashed the Nikkei 13% in a single day and rippled into US markets.
• ~48%: Lakosh's personal RSV hospitalization story illustrating how medical-records regulation degrades actual patient care.
• ~4%: Lakosh's skepticism about the Fed's projected path to a sub-3% neutral rate while inflation remains above target.
• ~56%: The Operation Choke Point/Silvergate Bank narrative arguing a fully-solvent, fully-reserved bank was destroyed by regulatory overreach, not market failure.