# How OpenAI Could Cause a US Recession | TCAF 264 The Compound · 2026-10-16 · 48 min · https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og-sV0vbLg4 ## Transcript Josh Brown You ask what an LLM is? It’s just a slightly more sophisticated word search system. Let’s predict the next word. It’s pretty good. I’m not saying an LLM is a thinking system, but it’s not like they think, right? Then why are you saying you’ll kill us? That sounds a bit strange. It seems like they should have perceptual ability, but LLMs don’t. I don’t even think about it. It’s simply searching for words or creating software, and software can also be considered a type of word. The reason I think that is because Dario Amodei and Sam Altman are probably terrified by now. Michael Batnick They got scared because they thought tokenmaxxing was over. For those who don’t know what tokenmaxxing is, it means software developers or companies received orders from their firms to use AI 24 hours a day. It cost too much. As a result, prices skyrocketed, and Uber used up its entire AI budget in just 3 months. So, was it this year or last year? I don’t remember very well. Josh Brown It was this year. It was spring. Michael Batnick Hmm. Tokenmaxxing is over. Open-weight models have come out that cost only one-tenth as much. They’re not as good as the existing models, but you don’t need a Mercedes-Benz every time you go on a trip, right? So we’re losing market share. There’s clear evidence that a price war is starting, and they were terrified. So they’re driving us in a direction like, “If you don’t regulate us, the world will end.” They think that if they’re regulated, they can prevent open-weight models from taking too much market share by manipulating the regulations. Josh Brown So you think you can create a duopoly that way? However, the fundamental problem with the entire AI industry is that there is no moat. There isn’t a single one. Michael Batnick That’s right. There really isn’t a single one. A model might be good for a day, but people quickly switch to another model. It’s different from Google, isn’t it? As you know, in the past, everyone used Google forever. It was to the point where I couldn’t even imagine the concept of not using Google. You can use Claude now, but if you don’t like it, you can switch to Gemini, and if you don’t like that either, you can switch to GPT. There is no moat either. The fact that people spend trillions of dollars annually on services without a moat shows how easily people can switch to other services. I’m not even surprised. It’s just like that. Josh Brown That’s right. I always thought that the best service would be the one that remembers the most information, or the one that can recall the most user information every time it’s used. But they’re all pretty similar. Michael Batnick That can happen. Which one would be the best? What’s the most suitable LLM for your work? Josh Brown It’s not for my own purposes; it’s just for research. Everything is fine. Everything is good. Michael Batnick Is there anything in particular you prefer? Josh Brown Our company uses Claude Enterprise as the standard. Josh Brown Yes. As a result, I now do all the work I used to do in ChatGPT in Claude, since we’re paying the cost anyway. You just get used to it. I think enterprise LLMs are a kind of clever way of building a moat. If all the employees at Fortune 500 companies get used to using Claude, there’s no reason to use anything else, right? Of course, if it were much cheaper, I’d use something else. If an open-weight model performs almost the same at one-tenth the price, I’ll use the open-weight model. Michael Batnick Yes, that’s the point. Josh Brown It’s not that I’m saying I won’t use Claude, but that Claude will have to lower its price. I’ve already heard rumors that prices are being lowered. Michael Batnick Yes. The founders of these AI research institutes are coming out and saying, “Please regulate us.” He even did a skit on Saturday Night Live. Now this phenomenon has become mainstream. Josh Brown That’s right. Since they don’t want competition, it means that as the scale grows, they can effectively set the rules. It’s a lie that some people claim LLMs will destroy the Earth. Michael Batnick Yes. It’s a very simple lie. ### Steve Eisman Joins Live Josh Brown Great. John, then let’s start the broadcast. Great. Are you ready? I’ll begin. This podcast is provided by VanEck. We are living in an era of rising debt, deglobalization, and large-scale physical construction to support the AI economy. This means an increase in demand for energy, raw materials, and infrastructure. Historically, investment in real assets has been a very solid foundation. VanEck holds ETFs specialized in these real assets: RAAX and VanEck physical asset ETFs. RAAX is actively managed and adjusts investment weightings for gold, energy, infrastructure, and natural resources based on the current macroeconomic environment rather than past market conditions. RAAX is the best choice for real asset investment. For more information, please visit vaneck.com/raaxcompound. Thank you, John. Now, everyone. Welcome to Compound and Friends. Josh Brown Welcome to Compound and Friends. We are one of the best podcasts in the United States. I’m very happy to announce that today’s guest runs the best investment podcast. While listening to the broadcast yesterday, I found out that some episodes are paid. It looks like I’ll have to subscribe to the paid episodes. By the way, the name of our podcast is The Real Eisman Playbook. I wanted to let you know in advance. Steve Eisman Well, I don’t think I’ll need much help. You have a huge number of YouTube subscribers, you know. Josh Brown That’s really good. Steve Eisman Thank you. Josh Brown Were you surprised? I didn’t expect to succeed this quickly after the broadcast started. That’s a really big broadcast. Steve Eisman I was completely surprised. Josh Brown Yes, but that’s cool. Steve Eisman Yes, it’s really cool. Josh Brown Steve is an investor and the host of the weekly podcast Real Estate Expert Playbook, which started in 2025. Steve became famous for short-selling the subprime mortgage market while running FrontPoint Partners just before the 2008 financial crisis, a deal detailed in Michael Lewis’s book, The Big Short. He later founded Emrys Partners in 2012 and joined Neuberger Berman as a managing director and portfolio manager in 2014. Ladies and gentlemen, Miami, everyone! Please give a big round of applause to Steve Eisman. Steve Eisman You already like me. Josh Brown It’s really good. The University of Miami is a really good school. It’s nice that there’s a swimming pool in the middle of the school. Michael Batnick That’s right. So my son looked around the campus and said, “My son isn’t stupid.” Josh Brown I’m not a fool. I remember when my daughter went to the University of Miami; she really enjoyed both her academic studies and the time she spent there. I told my wife, Valerie, who’s also from the University of Pennsylvania, “We looked like fools.” Steve Eisman Yes. Josh Brown I was shivering in the cold while attending school in the middle of Philadelphia, but I could have gone to Miami. What did your daughter major in at Miami? Michael Batnick My wife? Josh Brown No, no, no. My daughter majored in art history. Michael Batnick Buy art. ### CoreWeave Debt and AI Concentration Risk Josh Brown All right. I’d like to ask what you consider to be the most important question in the market right now. We’ve been planning to have you on for quite some time, and it seems we made the request at just the right time. Will the financing mechanisms for AI products collapse? There was a problem with CoreWeave yesterday. CoreWeave is one of the companies called a neocloud, and it’s basically a data center that operates rather than being self-owned. It isn’t owned by a hyperscaler, nor does it generate cash flow from advertising revenue like Alphabet, for example. It seems that the current yield has reached 15% due to the surge in debt. As you can see from chart 5, the price has dropped by 60%. The situation isn’t good. Steve Eisman It’s really bad. Josh Brown So what you’re seeing right now is the phenomenon where CoreWeave’s spread and yield are skyrocketing. It can be seen as a symbolic example representing all the companies that have to issue debt to finance these kinds of projects. You can’t just build half of these projects and leave them abandoned. Steve Eisman Of course, you could do that, but you’d go bankrupt. Josh Brown That’s not a good idea. I’d like to hear the opinion of someone who experienced the financial crisis firsthand. If you were someone who predicted and prepared for the financial crisis, you might have bet everything. I think the current situation is somewhat different from back then, but I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the fluctuations in bond yields and the discussions about whether these projects can continue. Steve Eisman Compared to the financial crisis, there’s a big difference. For example, let’s assume General Motors goes bankrupt. What happens? Everyone is laid off, some of GM’s suppliers go bankrupt, and many people lose their jobs. Josh Brown That’s right. Steve Eisman A recession will almost certainly hit that region. If bankruptcies spread, a nationwide recession could occur. If JPMorgan collapses, the Earth will burn up. Josh Brown That’s right. It’s the end of everything. If you can’t do it, everything is over. Steve Eisman The reason the government had to provide bailout funds to everyone is that a situation where people can’t withdraw money from banks must not occur. Josh Brown That’s right. This is in a similar context to the GM situation. Steve Eisman Yes. It’s a very big incident. Josh Brown Hmm. What would happen if we couldn’t extract the chips from the data center? That would be a big problem for you. Steve Eisman Yes, but it’s not the end of the world. Josh Brown Of course, I’ll cover the story of AI in more detail later, but let’s assume, for example, that OpenAI goes bankrupt tomorrow. I’m not making that prediction, but if that happens, I think the U.S. economy will immediately fall into a recession. Seems suspicious, isn’t it? Steve Eisman Yes. Josh Brown How did it become such a systemically important company? This is different from the financial crisis. Steve Eisman Because the banks are fine. Josh Brown How did it become such a systemically important company? OpenAI is a privately held company. Steve Eisman I understand that the company’s valuation in the private equity market is around $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion. Josh Brown How did it become a systemically important company in just 3 years, one that could plunge the entire U.S. economy into a recession tomorrow? Steve Eisman Both OpenAI and Anthropic have promised to invest in any company capable of adopting their technology. Josh Brown That’s right. Steve Eisman If you want to think about the problems with the AI story, simply put, the problem is market concentration. Two giant corporations, namely Nvidia, are leading the way. Nvidia’s revenue increased by more than 100% in the recent quarter. That’s surprising. It’s encouraging that the largest company on Earth has increased its revenue by more than 100%. However, the 10-Q report states that 70% of Nvidia’s accounts receivable—a proxy for revenue—came from 5 customers. Why is that a problem? You don’t want that kind of customer concentration. What would happen if even one of those customers had a problem? You’d lose a significant portion of the entire business. Speaker 1 Of course. I think I’m asking a bit of a stupid question. I was just curious. Steve Eisman Let me give you an example from when I was at Oppenheimer in the 1990s. There was a very talented software analyst. I remember a conversation I had with her. Oppenheimer wanted to take a rapidly growing software company public, but it only had 2 clients. She said, “No.” The reason was that if even one customer left, the company would be finished. Nvidia has 5 customers, but virtually every company at that scale is a customer. Speaker 1 No, they’ll probably be hyperscalers. Hyperscalers have hundreds of millions of customers. But 70% of hyperscalers’ AI revenue comes from Anthropic and OpenAI, and that figure accounts for about 25% to 30% of total cloud revenue. Oracle is in a much more serious situation because half of its order backlog consists of OpenAI projects. You can see it in the overall scale of the investment. OpenAI said to Oracle, “We’ll use your cloud. We’ll use the computing resources you provide, so build it for that. And for your reference, we need 10 times more resources. Build all these data centers.” All of this construction happened because Anthropic and OpenAI demanded it like crazy. ### Chip Selloff and OpenAI's Missing $20 Billion Yesterday, we learned a few things. First, high inflation figures emerged again. Steve Eisman Yes. Interest rates have risen. They went up again this morning. Speaker 1 Yes. But the interesting point, as I’ll talk about later, is that interest rates have fallen significantly. That shows where the pressure is coming from: people are afraid. Yesterday felt like the moment a bubble burst. CoreWeave’s debt has increased astronomically. Steve Eisman Yes, that’s right. They’re currently spending $640 million just on debt repayment, which is a very serious problem given their cash flow situation. Speaker 1 $2.1 trillion poured out of the market over the past 7 days. Did yesterday feel like the moment the bubble burst, or was it an opportunity to buy again? Looking back later, I’m going to say, “You stupid bastards!” Steve Eisman Before I answer, look at how $2.1 trillion vanished from the stock market in 7 days. You can see right on the screen how serious the situation is. This doesn’t happen in a normal market. It’s on a massive scale. Don’t you think people are too zealous? It seems like too many people want to be like Steve Eisman, the hero of the next big short-selling prediction. Honestly, it feels like a kind of disease. It reminds me of something I said on CNBC. It was such a good point that I’ll say it again. It was the day Ray Dalio, whom I respect, predicted that the world would end because of the fiscal deficit. Was it 2015? He did it in 2015, and he’s doing it again now. 1937? I was like that back then. Melissa Lee asked for my thoughts on the 5 p.m. show, and I said, “The problem with these people is that they all want to be like me. But I have news for them: Steve Eisman’s spot has already been taken.” Speaker 1 Yes. Steve Eisman The funny thing is, people want to be known as the person who predicted the next disaster. They want glory. But you know what? I’ve already enjoyed that honor. I don’t need it again. Honestly, I don’t really know. I don’t think CoreWeave is important enough to shake up the entire AI industry. I think Anthropic and OpenAI are much more important. To share some interesting data, OpenAI announced last week that its annual revenue as of the end of September was $50 billion. A month ago, they said it was $70 billion. Where did the $20 billion go? Has it disappeared? It’s gone. But I don’t think that’s a valid comparison. I have absolutely no idea what annualized sales mean. No one will know. Today, an article about Anthropic came out in the Financial Times. Regarding the revenue, I could be a bit wrong, but I checked the figures. They say that sales in the sixth quarter increased by 43%, recording $16.8 billion. Speaker 1 It increased by 43% in 3 months, but that’s lower than the 140% growth rate in the second quarter. Of course, we all know that kind of growth rate isn’t sustainable. Steve Eisman Yes, that’s right. But the important thing is that the impact started to appear as the tokenmaxxing came to an end. Speaker 1 As companies reviewed their budgets and started saying, “We can’t spend money at this rate on AI,” the technology was so good that, thanks to tokenmaxxing, they were making more money than they could have continued to earn. Steve Eisman Yes, that’s right. Speaker 1 The interesting point is that under these interest rate conditions, financing for new data centers will become difficult, and proving that the financing is feasible will also become much more difficult. On the demand side, there may be some changes as existing methods change, but supply constraints remain severe in many places. If supply is limited and demand continues to increase, interesting dynamics may form in the market. Steve Eisman That’s possible. Part of the current problem is that there’s strong nationwide opposition to data centers. It’s difficult to quantify exactly what might be unpopular. I’m going to make a bit of a crude joke: maybe the L.A. Dodgers? Speaker 1 Yes, yes, that’s good. But as you know, the backlash is so severe that it looks like the pace of data center construction will slow down significantly. This will be good news for people who sell computing services because the demand for data is decreasing. If data centers disappear, it will have a positive impact on the market because fewer computing resources will be purchased. Steve Eisman Because if we can’t build a data center, there’ll be nowhere to put computing resources. But demand for existing computing resources will actually increase. Speaker 1 That’s highly likely. Steve Eisman Yes. Actually, I wanted to ask you about that, because I think it’s an important part of this story. I don’t think demand for AI itself will change. Speaker 1 The people in front of me visited all the investment banks on Wall Street over the course of 2 days. They say that in 2027, those banks will invest much more budget in AI and AI-related projects, and hire more AI-related personnel, than in 2026 or 2025. At the corporate level, demand for AI won’t change. Another thing that won’t change is consumer demand. I think most people primarily use ChatGPT, and there’s also Claude. Looking at it from the agent perspective, there’s AI like Gemini, and virtually all Google searches are now being performed by AI. This technology won’t disappear either. Anyone using this technology will never say, “I should stop now. I didn’t really need this or make it part of my life. I’m just going to go back to 2022.” I don’t think that at all. Bond prices or the difficulty of issuing debt won’t significantly change the demand side. What changes is who builds the capacity to meet that demand. If companies like CoreWeave or Nebius can’t supply as much computing capacity as they want by issuing debt, the ball will be in the hyperscalers’ court again. Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft are in a much stronger position than they were a year ago. Back then, the cost of issuing debt might have been lower, or the demand for bonds might have been greater. What do you think of this idea from an investment perspective? It seems the position of hyperscalers will be further strengthened. Steve Eisman I agree that the position of hyperscalers has been strengthened. The point I find most concerning is that the business is too concentrated in a small number of companies. Anthropic and OpenAI say that even if price competition occurs, everything will eventually fall into place. The situation may change in 3 to 4 years, because by then many other companies will emerge to secure computing resources. But the market is so concentrated right now that we can only hope these 2 companies do well. Speaker 1 The pricing method is shifting from SaaS, or software as a service, which has been the sales method for enterprise software for the past 15 years, to a usage-based model. It used to be a system where costs were paid based on the number of employees. For example, if a company had 1,000 employees, Salesforce received $80 per employee. We’re now transitioning to usage-based pricing plans. This approach appears more sustainable than existing service sales methods. Of course, prices have gone up, and it seems companies have gained more control—or maybe not. In any case, companies seem to be accepting these changes, even though it’s more expensive. As people become more sensitive to costs, employees will use cheaper models much more frequently, which will put pressure on Anthropic and OpenAI to reduce prices. Steve Eisman Yes, that’s a pessimistic outlook. Great. Speaker 1 Do you think this is the beginning of the phenomenon we’re witnessing? ### AI Price War Bear Case and Oracle Steve Eisman I believe there’s a possibility that this could be the start. Speaker 1 What is the propagation mechanism by which a problem at OpenAI leads to various events, resulting in an overall economic recession? Speaker 2 Let’s assume a full-scale price war breaks out. I don’t know if it will actually happen, but let’s assume it does. Anthropic’s sales growth turns negative. No one will invest, and eventually investment will have to be reduced. Oracle will go completely bankrupt because half of its order backlog came from OpenAI. Speaker 1 For your information, Oracle’s stock price has completely crashed. Speaker 2 That’s right. Speaker 1 For those who don’t know, around the third quarter of last year, before Oracle’s earnings announcement, the stock price was $230. But when Oracle announced its earnings, they said their order backlog had increased from $138 billion to $455 billion. I don’t remember the exact figure, but it increased by $300 billion in 3 months. Everyone went wild, and the stock price jumped from $230 to $330 in just 2 days. Josh Brown It’s the first time I’ve seen a stock price go up by 100 points. Those were the stock prices of the largest companies in the market at the time. It was a tremendous upward trend. Michael Batnick I think it was Gil Luria from Davidson; someone published a report saying that all $300 billion was due to OpenAI. Everyone was in complete panic. That was the peak. The stock price fell from $330 to $230, and now it has dropped to $130. Josh Brown Don’t forget that people can’t trust companies that make them lose money. You bet your future on a company that’s pouring money into it like crazy? Michael Batnick What did you say? Josh Brown The stock market has been really exciting over the past few days. Michael Batnick I agree. As I mentioned yesterday, with the inflation figures coming out high, it seemed like people were thinking, “Oh no, this is the end.” It was really serious. Josh Brown It was even more serious this morning. There are no signs of improvement. Producer prices came out today. Yesterday was the Consumer Price Index, and today is the Producer Price Index. This isn’t good either. Memory-related stocks plummeted yesterday. Michael Batnick Let me tell you a fun fact. Western Digital fell by as much as 54%. Josh Brown 54%! Michael Batnick Even so, it has risen 100% since the beginning of the year. Josh Brown Right. This shows how sharp the rise was. I’ve never heard of a stock price doubling from the beginning of the year even though it was cut in half. I can’t believe it. Michael Batnick That’s right. Josh Brown The rate of return skyrocketed yesterday, but that doesn’t help those who bought at the peak. Michael Batnick Yes. The fact that returns have skyrocketed doesn’t help. Although Anthropic is not a listed company, a blockchain-based company called Hyperliquid is massively increasing its trading volume. $17.6 million worth of Anthropic stock was traded over the past 24 hours. This system is a kind of market and works quite well. It worked very well during the SpaceX IPO, too. This is Anthropic traded on Hyperliquid. Josh Brown Ah, I see. Michael Batnick Anthropic had poor earnings yesterday. Of course, that would have been the case. Sales figures were released after the market closed, and they completely plummeted. Josh Brown It plummeted by over 70% in over-the-counter trading. People went crazy. Twitter turned pitch black last night. People were in a complete panic, and it was the same this morning. Michael Batnick I wasn’t flustered at all. Josh Brown You were very calm. I saw it. Interestingly, Anthropic’s stock price went up about 5.5% this morning. Returns are falling significantly, and the stocks surging today are the worst stocks in the market. For example, Lennar seems to be the best-performing stock in the S&P 500 today. It’s a housing-related stock, so it’s everything even slightly related to interest rates. It’s fascinating how quickly market trends and the atmosphere change. Michael Batnick Who would care about interest rates last week? Josh Brown Interest rates probably wouldn’t matter at all. Michael Batnick Interest rates probably wouldn’t matter at all. That’s what I thought. But suddenly, the market started to panic. Ironically, that was the bottom. It’s really interesting that things like this happen in the stock market. Once interest rates peaked, did the stock market need some bad news to hit bottom? Anthropic stock broke through its low point, and the S&P 500 surged in just one day, didn’t it? And equal weight is taking out the lows. Josh Brown Well, this is the best game on Earth. Are you surprised that interest rates dropped so quickly? Michael Batnick I was actually quite surprised. The inflation figures were very bad. It seems the state of panic was severe enough for people to buy government bonds. But what we learned is exactly this: I fully agree with the questions or arguments of the past few months, and with your statement that the previous concerns about the deficit were nothing but bluff. Josh Brown I did say that. Michael Batnick When? Josh Brown Hmm, with us. Ah, the last time. That’s a good expression. But he spoke passionately. Michael Batnick It was very popular. The market is like a difficult-to-unravel ball of yarn. You can’t always know why it moves for one reason or another, but on some days you can identify the factors driving the trade. And yesterday we found out. Is it because of the financial irresponsibility of governments around the world? Or could it be because of someone? Josh Brown No, it’s because of AI. AI is leading the trading. As soon as even the slightest sign of weakness or sluggishness appeared in that trade, the 10-year Treasury yield plummeted from 5.4 to 5.1. Michael Batnick Yes. It’s all because of AI. That doesn’t mean we’ve suddenly become more reassured about financial matters. Josh Brown I don’t think so. People thought that bond selling, which was being conducted to boost AI trading, would slow down as investor sentiment weakened. So the government bond market breathed a sigh of relief and rose. Michael Batnick Yes. Josh Brown Yes. ### CoreWeave, Insurers and Mark Walter Michael Batnick That was an interesting part. Over the past year, the CEO of CoreWeave has sold a massive amount of stock. Show me Chart 5A, Daniel. The CEO of CoreWeave sold $682 million worth of stock. There’s a chart showing the price, volume, and selling position. Josh Brown To make an excuse for him, he’s not the kind of person who suddenly says, “Ah, I don’t like this stock anymore.” He has always sold stocks. All of this was planned in advance, and a significant portion of it is likely to pay taxes on the shares he received from shareholders. Michael Batnick Nevertheless, if a company is under such thorough scrutiny, eventually it will say to its shareholders, “Fine, I won’t sell my shares anymore. There’s no point in doing this any longer. I trust this company.” One might expect him to say that, but he didn’t. And yesterday, I’m not sure if it’s right to say “adding insult to injury,” but Steve, I’d like to hear your thoughts on this issue. The Financial Times published an article stating that CoreWeave is aiming for unlimited insurance money to fund the construction of AI. That’s the main point of the article. Striking that pose, he said, “I believe now is the right time to make an investment proposal by leveraging my insurance contract.” Imagine saying that. Josh Brown The point is that Mark Walter has to sell the LA Dodgers back to his insurance company. Actually, he bought the Dodgers, didn’t he? And you have to invest the proceeds in CoreWeave. Michael Batnick If that happens, 2 potential scandals will become entangled into 1 big story. He has a lot of money, so he’s just saying he’ll give it a try. Josh Brown Steve, this is one of the market areas where people anticipate the next generation of short selling. It’s where people plant flags. Steve Eisman I completely agree. Life insurance is risky. Let’s go back to Mark Walter’s story. We just covered that on the podcast. He bought the LA Dodgers, the LA Lakers, and many other sports teams, but I didn’t disclose that. He just bought them because he wanted to. It means they want to own the LA Dodgers. The Dodgers are the same. But I want them to buy me. Michael Batnick So he lent money to another company through an insurance company, and he ended up owning that company as well. Steve Eisman That’s right. Or they’re trying to cover up the fact that they intend to use that money to personally seize control of the management. Anyway, it worked out well. That went really well. The price went up. The Lakers, too. He got his hands on $2 billion in an instant. I don’t know if he said it himself or if others said it, but I’ve seen something like that. I think Matt Levine wrote about this topic. Someone called this a crime, but they called it a victimless crime because the value has gone up. Michael Batnick The rebuttal was, “Wait a minute. You can’t do that.” Steve Eisman I suppose so. Of course it’s illegal. But if Grandma had known she was investing in the contract, she wouldn’t have bought it. Michael Batnick That’s right. Then you wouldn’t have been able to receive the money at 3% interest. You would have had to pay 12% interest. But let me tell you a fun fact: Mark Walter’s insurance company is headquartered in Delaware, and there’s an insurance regulatory agency in Delaware. Okay, here’s the question. What did the current Delaware Insurance Commissioner do before becoming an insurance commissioner? What was his job? What kind of work did he do for a living? Try to guess. Josh Brown Did he work in finance? Michael Batnick No. Josh Brown Hmm, try to guess. Was it a podcaster? Michael Batnick He was a sheriff. Josh Brown Ah, now I understand. And he’s an insurance supervisor. Michael Batnick Yes, I understand perfectly now. I have no ill feelings toward the sheriff. They protect us. However, when it comes to insurance, associating sheriffs with insurance is a bit strange. Great. Okay, here’s the question. Many people writing on Substack are mentioning that insurance companies are investing in AI data centers. My question is: How dangerous is this for the policyholder? How will these investments affect insurance policyholders? Will the claim made by those writing about this issue—that there’s greater systemic risk to ordinary people than to speculators—be proven true? What do people think about this part? Aren’t you particularly worried? Josh Brown They’re literally controlling policy. Steve Eisman I’m not worried. The important thing is finding the answer. ### AI Regulation: Will Anyone Be Held Liable? Michael Batnick Yes. Great. Steve, before we wrap up, there are two more things I’d like to ask you. You just mentioned the political backlash. I’d like to ask about that, not just in relation to data center construction, but overall. I heard an episode you shared with someone who recently gave a speech at the UN about the dangers of AI. The White House has released 4 plans for AI regulation. It sounds like everyone is fending for themselves, but there’s talk of establishing a committee composed of AI industry professionals. The committee’s guidelines say that responsibility must be taken if a problem arises. Imagine that something you invented goes out of control and causes damage. I agree with that point, but who’s responsible? Should investors who invested in such a company pay out, or should the executive who created something truly harmful be held personally responsible? I’d like to hear your opinion on whether regulations like these will be effective. And if you have any other suggestions, which ones would be good? Steve Eisman In my opinion, if you run an AI company and that company hacks someone or commits wrongdoing, the company must be held responsible. Of course, you have to take responsibility. But the more interesting question is this: I’m the CEO of that company, and I knew this would happen, but I didn’t care, and then it happened. Who would sue me? What happened in 2008? That’s the point I made next. No punishment was handed down to the executives who committed the worst fraud in history. I was on a podcast where I interviewed a colleague. She often talks about corporate fraud. We talked about fraud and discussed how the CEO must take responsibility. She asked me, almost pleading, “Steve, what can I do?” I said, “I can’t do anything, because I won’t do anything anyway.” That was my answer. Josh Brown That’s right. Unfortunately, that’s probably the case, at least for now. No one went to jail during the 2008 financial crisis, so there’s no way anyone would go to jail for hacking, right? Can current regulations really prevent anything? I’m a bit skeptical. I think regulations will only be put in place after a crisis hits. Steve Eisman It’s always like that. Josh Brown What do you think about the government investing equity in selected successful companies? You must like that. Steve Eisman I think it would be terrible. Josh Brown You don’t like the government investing equity in AI research institutes or projects? Steve Eisman No, because then everyone would think the company is too big to fail. I don’t want a bailout. I don’t want government intervention. ### Hyperscalers, Anthropic IPO and SpaceX Josh Brown All right. Looking at the current structure of the hyperscalers, the top 7 companies, known on Wall Street as the “Mag 7,” excluding Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, and Tesla, are all jumping into this business. Meta has built its own data center, but it could also lease computing resources to outside companies if it wanted to. Do you think these companies’ market capitalizations will reach $10 trillion within the next 5 to 10 years, or have they already reached their natural limits of scale? Steve Eisman I don’t think there’s a natural limit to scale. Josh Brown All right. But I think the important question is whether this will unfold like the growth of the internet. When I was at Oppenheimer, Henry Blodget had an office right across from mine. Steve Eisman That’s right. He went out and said that the internet would generate tremendous wealth and conquer the world. He was 100% right. But he was wrong about the first generation of internet companies. The second generation went from strength to strength, using the foundation established by the first generation as a stepping stone. Maybe that will happen again this time. Companies like AOL, Netscape, Yahoo, and Excite ultimately failed. Of the first-generation companies that come to mind, Amazon is the only one that’s done relatively well. It’s not that the current situation is better or worse. In the past, though, there were too many companies that didn’t even qualify to go public. Josh Brown That’s true. There are 2 companies that have taken over everything right now. Steve Eisman Yes, that’s right. Josh Brown Do you think Anthropic will go public this year? Steve Eisman It really should. Josh Brown Yes, I agree. Steve Eisman I think they need to list right now because of Token Max. Their performance is going to start looking really bad. They have to grab the opportunity while the iron is hot. My conspiracy theory is that Anthropic needs to go public before the third-quarter earnings announcement. Josh Brown All right. Why does OpenAI seem like it isn’t in such a hurry? Steve Eisman I think they’re in a similar situation, and that’s how it should be. Josh Brown I don’t understand. All right. Do you think Anthropic’s IPO will go well? Aside from the fact that its performance isn’t particularly good, do you think the IPO will be well received? Steve Eisman Let me put it this way. SpaceX was the biggest IPO we’d ever seen. There was a lot of pessimism on Twitter, where pessimism is prevalent. People predicted it would hurt index funds and that money would flow out of other stocks to cover the size of the IPO. There was talk that shareholders would suffer huge losses from insider selling, and that it would start at $135 and plummet to $50. With insider selling allowed, people could sell. Many said the stock would be a huge disaster, a disaster for everyone. But that didn’t happen. After listing, the stock price fell, rose again, and fell again, but it’s moving like a typical tech stock. A company like Anthropic is of a similar size. Do you think it will have a similar reaction before gradually adapting to the market? I’m not sure. Josh Brown Great. Let me ask you this: would you buy it if it went public? You’d never buy it, right? Then let me ask you something you might be able to answer. Steve Eisman I’ll give it a try. Josh Brown Earnings increased by 30% this year, but investors are saying that growth can’t be sustained. The price-to-earnings ratio we’re willing to pay has also dropped sharply. What do you think about this situation? Is it a bull market or a bear market, or are you not bothered at all? I’m curious what you think. Steve Eisman I don’t know much about valuation. It’s sensitive in that respect. Josh Brown All right. But what is the market telling you? Steve Eisman That’s purely a story. There’s only one important story right now, and that’s AI. If you tell me how the AI story will turn out, I’ll tell you how the stock market will turn out. That’s all. Many people say the stock market isn’t the economy, but right now, I think that’s true to some extent. I believe that companies that haven’t even been listed yet have the ability to cause an economic recession. I believe the market performance of listed companies stems from derivatives of AI trading. And the bond market has come to realize, as Michael said yesterday, how important the ability to issue bonds is to yields. I think the current economy has become one of those situations where it’s like the stock market. It won’t last forever, but right now, that’s the case. I think that’s true now more than ever. Josh Brown Well, in that case, how important is it for this market to hold near its high, or for a catastrophic event not to occur? It feels like feedback, but I don’t think so. Let’s get back to my original point. If you look at the S&P, tech stocks make up 40%, and companies like Google and Amazon account for 50%. If you add investment banks, GE Vernova, Quanta, Eaton, Rockwell, and others, it amounts to 65% of the S&P. What about industrial stocks? In the end, it’s all just one trade. It’s AI. Steve Eisman There’s no need to discuss this further, right? If demand holds and someone is willing to support construction funding, it’ll be fine. ### Housing Market: Worst Since the GFC Josh Brown It’ll be fine. There’s another area I know well: the housing market. Steve Eisman Yes. Josh Brown We’re currently in the worst housing market situation since the global financial crisis. Clearly, it’s not exactly the same situation, but it’s definitely bad. I can’t believe nobody cares, even though one-third of the economy is at recession levels. Nobody cares. Everything is running smoothly thanks to AI, right? That’s a huge relief. Thanks to AI, the stock market, and the way the current economy is structured, everything is running smoothly. 2022 was a really strange year for homebuilders. It’s really strange that housing construction stocks are booming when the housing market is paralyzed. Everyone who owns a home has been completely stuck. Interest rates were so high that I couldn’t sell my house, and there were neither buyers nor sellers. So what was left? Steve Eisman A massive number of new homes poured out. All the construction companies, including Lennar, Pulte, and KB, enjoyed a boom. They poured out all sorts of benefits like a frenzy. But that situation is over now. It seems like people are gradually getting used to this reality: “This is how interest rates are supposed to be. This is what mortgage loans are really like.” But listings will definitely start appearing on the market, and housing-related stocks are plummeting. Lennar is falling day by day. There was a huge rebound today, which is fortunate. I hope it lasts a long time. Josh Brown What do you think about the housing market? Steve Eisman I’ll think about it for a moment. The housing market is stuck because of interest rates. Housing prices have probably never been this cheap in our lifetime. Josh Brown It wasn’t just that it was unaffordable. Considering the cost of the loan relative to income, it has probably never been this difficult to manage. Michael Batnick You’re right. It’s a disaster. Mortgage interest rates aren’t the only problem. Of course, interest rates are a problem, but housing insurance premiums, utilities, and taxes have also skyrocketed. Even so, housing prices didn’t go down. According to an estimate I received, if you include all the monthly costs of owning a home, home prices today are 50% more expensive than they were 5 years ago. Josh Brown Yes, that’s right. I think so too. As a landlord, I believe housing prices will go down. Michael Batnick I think it’ll end that way. Yes, that will happen. It’s already started going down. Does it go down when the economy is in a recession, or does it go down because more is built? If supply decreases, supply in the market will increase. For the first time in a long while, the number of home foreclosures is increasing quite significantly. Supply is increasing. However, demand is still huge. There are as many as 70 million people in my age group, and while not everyone needs a home, many people do. But I can’t afford to buy one. Steve Eisman Yes. Speaker 2 If the price doesn’t go down, I can’t buy it. Steve Eisman Yes. Speaker 2 You’ll be able to buy it when the price goes down. So I think housing prices will go down. Steve Eisman Do you think that will happen? Speaker 2 Eventually, housing prices will fall, but the process is so gradual that it seems it’ll take several years. Could a decline in the housing market actually revitalize the economy? Steve Eisman It’ll proceed slowly. Speaker 2 Do you think that’s impossible with interest rate cuts alone? Steve Eisman Dropping interest rates would be helpful, but there’s still a long way to go. As I mentioned, the burden of insurance premiums, utility bills, and taxes has become so heavy that it’s difficult to handle. Speaker 2 ### Who Will Call the Next Big Short? It’s really hard to handle. Lastly, you said that everyone tries to be like Steve Eisman, but I don’t want to be like Steve Eisman. Steve Eisman You’ve already done enough. Speaker 2 There are more people predicting crises now. It’s not necessarily about betting money on predictions, but about using your reputation. You spend your time writing very negative research reports or Substack posts, or retweeting all sorts of bad news on Twitter. I think that if something bad happens, you’ll eventually look for the person who said the right thing before it happened. And that person will be regarded as, “This is the very person who foresaw that situation,” whether they were right or wrong. There are hundreds of people like that. There really are a lot. Do you think that will happen after a crisis? Will we end up finding the so-called “person who spoke the truth”? Or will people say, “What you did will be difficult to replicate in the next crisis”? Because he didn’t just tweet. That’s the difference. Steve Eisman Yes, I think that’s right. Speaker 2 But what do you think when you see so many people competing to say the most negative things possible about what will happen next? Shouldn’t you be happy that you were wrong? Steve Eisman Yes. That’s exactly what I want to tell you. They were wrong, and I’m glad they were wrong. Look, there will be an adjustment someday. I don’t know what kind of adjustment that will be. Speaker 2 Is the lesson “Don’t make wishes carelessly”? Are you asking if it was good for you to become what you are after this situation? Steve Eisman It wasn’t good at all. To be honest, I was plagued by tremendous irritation and anxiety. Many people probably got angry at me. “You ruined the world. It’s all your fault.” I heard that a lot, and I was overwhelmed with anxiety. As you know, I never want to go through that again after hearing that everything is my fault. Now, as I mentioned, whatever happens, it won’t be a serious situation like a financial crisis. You mentioned that institutions used 40-to-1 leverage in the past, but that’s not the case now. Speaker 2 However, if AI really collapses, could it lead to a severe economic recession? Steve Eisman Of course. However, it probably won’t be on that scale. Speaker 2 Well, I think that’s a good way to wrap things up. To those reading all these writings, comments, and opinions, I believe that although you’re not the ultimate authority, the perspective of someone who has gone through a much more serious situation will be helpful. Steve Eisman I don’t think it necessarily needs to be resolved that way. Speaker 2 Thank you so much for saying that, and thank you sincerely for appearing on the show today. Josh Brown Steve Eisman, everyone. Shall we wrap up by taking some time to talk about our individual resumes? Steve Eisman How was it? Speaker 2 Yes, that’s good. Josh Brown Everyone, on behalf of Compound and our friends, thank you for becoming the impromptu live studio audience today. I hope you had a pleasant time. Steve, Michael, and I all sincerely wish you the best of luck with your graduation from Miami and the start of your future careers. Please give a round of applause. Steve Eisman Thank you.