MacroVoices #526 Matt Barrie: Pay To PrAI

**SPEAKER_1** (0:07)
This is Macro Voices, the free weekly financial podcast targeting professional finance, high net worth individuals, family offices and other sophisticated investors. Macro Voices is all about the brightest minds in the world of finance and macroeconomics, telling it like it is, bullish or bearish, no holds barred. Now, here are your hosts, Erik Townsend and Patrick Ceresna.

**Erik Townsend** (0:33)
Macro Voices, episode 526 was produced on April 2nd, 2026 I'm Erik Townsend. We've got another Macro Voices doubleheader lined up for you, and it's going to be a doozy. President Trump gave an address Wednesday night that surprised the markets. So I'm recording earlier than usual this week on Wednesday night, about an hour after President Trump's speech, in which he said that if no deal can be reached, the US plans include targeting all of Iran's civilian electric power generation plants, probably simultaneously. That's exactly the red line that Iran has previously said would cause it to retaliate by targeting desalination plants and the UAE's Baraka nuclear power station. Now, we know the president's negotiating style is to make dire threats and then walk them back once a deal is reached. So hopefully, the threat of targeting civilian power generation infrastructure will come off the table soon. But overall, my take is that this conflict is heating up, not cooling down as the market was interpreting before President Trump's Wednesday evening speech. And the president was clear in that speech in saying that the US would be hitting Iran very hard over the next two weeks if no deal is reached. We're going to kick things off with an exceptional performance by freelancer.com CEO Matt Barrie, who returns as this week's feature interview guest for a full interview on the latest developments on artificial intelligence, what they mean for private credit markets, why the AI business model is setting the stage for an eventual market dislocation on the scale of the 2000.com bust, why paper token inference pricing is inevitable, and why it will collapse the current AI business model, and much more.
Then for this week's Iran Conflict Update, Energy Outlook Advisors founder and managing partner, Dr. Anas Alhajji returns as this week's second feature interview guest, and it's going to run just as long as our first feature interview, because there was so much to cover after the president's Wednesday night address. So this is going to be a long episode, but a very important one. So sit back, relax, and expect some really exceptional content from both of our guests. Then be sure to stay tuned for our post-game segment, when Patrick's Trade of the Week will take a look at private credit markets, and how to play them in public markets which you can actually trade. And then of course we'll have our usual coverage on all the markets as of Wednesday's close. Please bear with us this week, folks. I've asked our production team to prioritize getting this episode out as quickly as possible, and given the length of both interviews, an editing glitch or two just might slip through the cracks.

**Patrick Ceresna** (3:27)
And I'm Patrick Ceresna with the Macro Scoreboard week over week as of the close of Wednesday, April 2nd, 2026 The S&P 500 indexed down 24 basis points, trading to 65.75. Markets put together an oversold bounce, but will rallies fail with this geopolitical backdrop? We'll take a closer look at that chart and the key technical levels to watch in the post-game segment. The US dollar indexed down nine basis points, trading at 99.55. The May WTI crude oil contract up 1,085 basis points to 100.12. The May RBOB gasoline up 439 basis points, trading at 309 The June gold contract up 500 basis points to 48.13. Gold's approaching its 50-day moving average, bouncing from its oversold conditions. The May copper contract up 162 basis points, trading at 565 The April uranium contract down 12 basis points, trading at 84.30. And the US 10-year treasury yield up 4 basis points, trading at 437 The key news to watch this week is Friday's jobs numbers, and next week we have the ISM services PMIs, the Core PCE and CPI inflation numbers, and the FOMC meeting minutes. This week's feature interview guest is freelancer.com founder, Matt Barrie. Erik and Matt discuss the sustainability of the AI business model, why rising risks and weak unit economics could lead to a shakeout similar to the.com era, and how AI's impact on software and private credit could create broader market stresses. And stay tuned for a special follow up with Dr. Anas Alhajji, where we break down the escalating Iran conflict and its implications on global energy markets. Erik's interview with Matt Barrie is coming up as Macro Voices continues right here at macrovoices.com.