MacroVoices #546 Darius Dale: Darius Dale for POTUS 2028

**Darius Dale** (0:00)
Every Fourth Turning since the 15th century has ended in total war. We'd be remiss to forecast that outcome, but we'd also be remiss to not understand that the distribution of probable economic policy and market outcomes is ultimately as wide as anyone not named Warren Buffett, a trading risk has ever seen.

**Erik Townsend** (0:15)
That was 42 Macro founder Darius Dale. I'm Erik Townsend, and this is Macro Voices, the free weekly podcast targeting professional finance and sophisticated private investors. Episode 546 was produced on August 20th, 2026
Darius and I will discuss drivers in growth and inflation and what they mean for markets and the global economy. This will be our final regular format show before our annual summer break. So for the next two weeks, we have some special timeless pre-recorded content prepared for you. Next week, August 27th, Tressa's chief economist Daniel Lacay returns to discuss the US dollar's role as the global reserve currency. What would it take to lose that title and what would markets look like if the dollar is eventually displaced from that role? Then on September 3rd, I'll be introducing you to a special guest whose name you might not have heard before.
Dr. Carly Anderson is a venture capitalist specializing in early stage energy-related technology companies. She's one of the smartest people I know, and I think you're really going to enjoy this interview going into the Labor Day holiday weekend, where we'll talk about everything from nuclear reactors to supercritical carbon dioxide turbines to what they have in common with one another. Then we'll be back with our regular show format on September 10th.

**Patrick Ceresna** (1:37)
I'm Patrick Ceresna. Let's dive straight into this interview.

**Erik Townsend** (1:40)
As always, Darius has prepared a terrific slide deck to accompany this week's interview. You'll find the download link in your research roundup email. If you don't have a research roundup email, just go to our homepage, macrovoices.com, click the red button above Darius' picture. It says, looking for the downloads. Just a reminder, because Darius' business is all about this huge slide deck that he produces for his paying clients, he does redact the slides that we don't talk about. Don't be surprised if some of the slides are not visible in the deck. The ones that we don't discuss in the interview won't be visible, but there is a full deck available for 42 Macro subscribers. Darius, it's great to get you back on the show. It's been so long, I don't know how long it's been. It's been so long that last time we spoke, it was not the policy of the United States of America to, oh, I don't know, do something crazy, like take all of its structured long-term debt and see if we can buy it back and accelerate that by selling a whole bunch of bills and moving long-term debt into short-term debt. It could possibly go wrong. There, let's take the teaser rate.

**Darius Dale** (2:47)
Erik, I love you, man.

**Erik Townsend** (2:51)
What a way to get stuff up anymore. I mean, really, this is slow. We don't know what to do about the back end of the curve backing up. Let's just, I don't know, borrow from the short end of the curve and see if we can shore it up.

**Darius Dale** (3:05)
My experience in financial markets, which admittedly is only a couple of decades, but it's packed full of knowledge from studying basically every finance book that's relevant to read and interacting with hundreds of the world's top by-siders across the world for many years, and building models for them, having model stress tests, getting laughed out of rooms, getting invited to very important rooms. I've had quite the career on the Wall Street for somebody my age, and I'll tell you right now, my experience tells me that financial market manipulation tends not to be durable in terms of its intended impact, but I think we're early in the process of it not being durable. So let me walk you through the process of how we can arrive at that conclusion, ultimately its implications, and kind of as it relates to what investors should be doing about it in their portfolios, because at the end of the day, that's what matters, right? It's how you manage risk. Before we even get started, I just want to remind everyone, you normally do this for me, but the last time I was on Macro Voices was the, I think it was the first episode of 2026, continuing a long line of fantastic Macro Voices discussions with you, Erik. I think we said buckle up, expect some volatility, but 2026 is going to be a great year for risk assets, stocks in particular. And obviously, I think that, you know, here we are in late August. I think that that conclusion is largely intact. Getting into this front page news of our acting Treasury Secretary, not acting, he's our Treasury Secretary, and a former client of mine and someone I've known for quite a long time and someone I have a tremendous amount of respect and admiration for, Scott Bessent. I think he's doing a fantastic job as our Treasury Secretary. And quite frankly, if anybody with less skills than him were sitting in that seat, we'd be in a far worse place from an economic standpoint, a financial market standpoint. So everybody listen to me talk right now, give a golf clap to our friend Scott Bessent, because he's doing a bang up job in terms of in terms of the hand he's dealt, which is not a great hand. So if we can start this presentation, Erik, on slide 11, you know, we published our initial investing doing a fourth turning regime analysis to 42 Macro members in the summer of 2023 And there were several key takeaways from that presentation, some of which we'll walk you through over the next few minutes or so. But I would say the biggest key takeaway when you put together all of the different economic risks, you know, policy risks, financial market risks and geopolitical risks from that presentation, of which we don't have time to get into all of them. It was like a 100-side presentation. But when you put together all those risks from those different categories, the very glaringly obvious key takeaway from our perspective at the time was that there is a geopolitically driven supply-demand imbalance in the treasury bond market.