MacroVoices #552 David Rosenberg: Navigating The Noise

David Rosenberg (0:00)

Historically, when a one-party power swings to a two-party system with gridlock, 80% of the time, the economy slows, 80% of the time, inflation goes down, and 80% of the time, bond yields go down in that two-year period after a national election.

Erik Townsend (0:18)

That was Rosenberg Research Founder, David Rosenberg. I'm Erik Townsend, and this is Macro Voices, the free weekly podcast targeting professional finance and sophisticated private investors. Episode 552 was produced October 1st, 2026

Listener response to our Macro Voices Unplugged Bonus Episode that gave you a double dose of Michael Every last week was overwhelmingly positive. So before we dive in with Rosie, a quick housekeeping announcement. Going forward, we'll consider adding Macro Voices Unplugged Bonus Episodes for guests like Michael and Anas Al-Haji, and others who just have too much to say for one episode. But out of respect for both your time and our production budget, quite frankly, we're only going to do that when the circumstances warrant. The next likely one would be when we bring Dr. Anas Al-Haji back. And you can expect that before the end of the year, certainly and maybe even before the end of this month, we've got to work that into our schedule.

That would come complete with an unplugged bonus episode. And get this, if you want to influence the content of that unplugged session, be sure to follow Anas on X because he's going to reach out to his audience for questions and topics that they want answered when we bring him back for that unplugged session. It's still a few weeks away, so you've got time now to make your request known to Anas by tweeting them. Don't send them to us because Anas is collecting that information. He's going to assimilate it and we'll figure out what you guys want us to discuss in Anas' first appearance in a unplugged session which we'll do after a regular format. Another thing I want to announce as I have this opportunity is we're definitely committed to keeping the flagship podcast interview length to a target of 45 to 55 minutes and not more. That's out of respect for your time because we know you're busy.

If you want the extended content, we'll always put it in a separate episode. So what you can expect when we bring Anas back is a fairly tight update on the market and what's going on in the Middle East, and then a much broader discussion in the follow-on, which will probably come a day later again. But that one will be content that you've requested by tweeting it to Anas. Now, let's dive into Rosie's latest interview, which covers secular inflation, why Rosie doesn't buy the popular narrative, the AI boom and what could bust it, midterm elections as a setup for economic slowdown, as well as Washington gridlock, and much, much more. That's all coming up in today's episode of Macro Voices.

Patrick Ceresna (2:57)

I'm Patrick Ceresna. Let's dive straight into this interview.

Erik Townsend (3:00)

Joining me now is David Rosenberg, also known as a best-selling author. New book coming out called Bear in the Bull Ring. That's October 6th, already available for pre-order on Amazon.

New ETF, Rosie ETF, boy, perfectly named. We'll come back to the book and the ETF at the end of the interview. But David, I wanted to get you back on the program for one specific reason, which is it's hard to find anybody that is not flipped to inflationist and maybe even inflation alarmist because, well, it's in vogue right now. There's anyone I know in this industry I can count on not to be an inflationist just because it's in vogue, it's David Rosenberg. So is inflation the thing we need to focus on? And if not, why not?

David Rosenberg (3:43)

I'm never going to say that we shouldn't be watching inflation because that would be an irresponsible comment to make. But if you're going to ask me, is inflation the risk that the media and pundits on the business cable shows and Wall Street research reports, is inflation the big threat that it's made out to be? In my opinion, it's not. And what I find interesting is that the same people now talking about inflation because of energy, and specifically crack spreads and diesel, were the same people that were yelling about inflation back in the spring, summer and fall of last year because of the Trump tariffs. And we were going to have a mountain of product inflation, imported inflation. And you know what? That never really did happen. It's not as if we didn't get a temporary bump in inflation from the tariffs, but you really have to strain your eye to see it. And if it was going to show up in any persistent way, it would show up in the Core Goods CPI index.