The End of Globalization: Why Abundance Is an Illusion with Jeff Currie

**Jeff Currie** (0:00)
The period of globalization has ended. You need to build multiple supply chains, redundancy, new manufacturing systems, and all of that. Why aren't people putting money into it? They won't. It wasn't the great returns in the 70s that got people to put money in the space.
It was shortages. It was lines. People don't buy these stories until you run out. That's going to hit middle-class Americans and change their lifestyles like they've never seen before. And you have the abundance illusion that the western governments are pursuing that make it more difficult. I think it will take the actual shortage to get people to move. And then we get the capital move. It's a different ballgame.

**Nate Hagens** (0:41)
You're listening to The Great Simplification. I'm Nate Hagens. On this show, we describe how energy, the economy, the environment and human behavior all fit together and what it might mean for our future. By sharing insights from global thinkers, we hope to inform and inspire more humans to play emergent roles in the coming Great Simplification.
Today, I'm joined by energy commodity analyst, Jeff Currie, for a deep look at the relationship between financial and physical energy and commodity markets, and how that informs the energy supply that will be available to us in the coming months, years, and beyond. Jeff Currie is the chief strategy officer at Altis Partners. Previously, Jeff served as chief strategy officer of Energy Pathways at the Carlyle Group, where he currently serves as senior advisor to the firm.
Jeff is also the former global head of commodities research at Goldman Sachs, where he helped to build their commodities business. During his nearly three decades at the firm, he became one of the leading commodity market strategists on Wall Street, known for advising clients through the commodity supercycle of the 2000s, the shale supply shock of the 2010s, and most recently, the twin shocks of the pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine War. Despite getting our graduate degrees from the same city and starting on Wall Street in the same year, and both having an energy systems perspective, this was our very first conversation. We talked about the magnitude of impact the Iran-Hormuz situation will have on the West and on the world that is still mostly being discounted and ignored in financial markets. We talked about the importance of diesel to our economy and how close we are to physical product shortages. We talked about debt and the decline and fragmentation of globalization and an inevitable shift towards state capitalism to coordinate the needed infrastructure investment. I expect Jeff will be back on TGS. This was a great initial conversation. If you are enjoying this podcast, I invite you to subscribe to our Substack newsletter, where my team and I share written content related to The Great Simplification. You can find the link to subscribe in the show description. With that, please welcome Jeff Currie.
Jeff Currie, welcome to the program.

**Jeff Currie** (3:11)
Pleasure to be here, Nate. So I'm looking forward to the discussion.

**Nate Hagens** (3:15)
We have a lot to talk about.
You have spent three decades at Goldman Sachs as one of the leading commodity strategists on Wall Street, advising clients through the super cycle of the 2000s, the shale supply shock of the 2010s, the pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine War, and now mid-2026, and I will time stamp this, Thursday, July 23rd recording. From your seat at Carlyle, you're watching the Iran War, the destruction of the Strait of Hormuz this morning, the Ansar al-Ala attacks against the Saudi tanker. I have a lot of questions for you, but before we get into the details, from a wide boundary angle, how do you read this moment in the history of energy? And is this another cycle, or is it something structurally different?

**Jeff Currie** (4:05)
I mean, there's a cycle going on, and I'm not going to talk about that. We'll spend most of the time talking about the cycle. But I think just from an initial knee-jerk reaction, it's like, okay, macro community, you weren't worried about the Straits of Hormuz. So what did we do? We shut the Red Sea, we have shut the Black Sea, we've taken out half of the refinery capacity out of Russia. So if that wasn't good enough for you, is this one good enough for you? You still see the market struggling to hold $100 a barrel at this point in time. If you would have given me that scenario two years ago, I'd say global recession and we're in deep, deep trouble. By the way, the product prices are telling you you're in a deep, deep trouble. But I like to say crude is the noise, products are the signal, but people are not looking at them. But when you look at crude, the reason why everyone is convinced that Trump will taco.