The Higher Standard

Private Equity Is Broken: How Debt, Fees & Leveraged Buyouts Really Work

Private equity sold itself as the smartest money in the room. Turns out, a lot of that “genius” may have just been 40 years of falling rates, cheap leverage, and somebody

OpenAI Bought the Narrative: The Shocking Truth About TBPN & Silicon Valley Media

Silicon Valley didn’t suddenly fall in love with podcasts because everyone discovered the joys of long-form conversation. They figured out something much more valuable: i

Treasury Is Buying Its Own Debt — Scott Bessent’s $40 Trillion Gamble

Episode 350, and apparently the milestone gift is discovering that the United States is now paying the mortgage with the credit card. Chris and Rajeil unpack Scott Bessen

Stagflation Is Coming? The Fed’s Inflation & Jobs Trap Explained

In Episode 349 of The Higher Standard, Chris breaks down why cooling CPI doesn’t mean inflation is dead, why the Fed may be walking straight into a stagflation trap, and

Japan Just Exposed America’s Mortgage Problem And It Can't Be Stopped

Everyone is waiting for the next housing crash. Chris thinks they may be watching the wrong thing. In Episode 348, he connects the lessons of 2008 to today’s mortgage mar

The Truth About Situational Awareness: Ken Griffin, Citadel & the AI Bubble

In Episode 347, Chris goes solo and pulls apart one of the wildest Wall Street stories of the year: the near-collapse of Situational Awareness, the AI-focused hedge fund

How AI Will Be The Catalyst For A Recession

Five years, 345 episodes and one painfully empty chair later, THS enters its next era. Chris is back behind the mic with Rajeil riding shotgun, a laptop full of charts an

Saied’s Final Episode: The End of an Era, CPI Shock & the Fed’s AI Gamble

After five years, 345 episodes, countless laughs, arguments, predictions, detours and unforgettable moments, this episode marks the end of an era for The Higher Standard.

Kevin Warsh’s AI Inflation Fantasy: Is the Fed Rewriting the Rules?

Kevin Warsh says AI is about to make everything cheaper, which sounds incredible until you remember corporations have never met a cost savings they could not quietly turn

Palantir CEO Alex Karp Exposes the AI Scam Corporate America Is Falling For

Alex Karp went on CNBC to talk about Palantir’s new Nvidia initiative, but what came out was much bigger than a partnership announcement. In this episode, Chris and Saied

The Housing Affordability Crisis Just Became Political Theater

In this episode of The Higher Standard, Chris, Saied, and Rajeil break down how America’s housing affordability crisis got dragged into political theater. A bipartisan ho

Buy, Borrow, Die... How America's Tax Code Built a New Aristocracy

America doesn’t tax wealth. It taxes people who need paychecks. In this episode, we break down Ray Madoff’s The Second Estate and the playbook behind America’s new aristo

The 1970s Inflation Pattern Is Repeating... And Nobody Wants to Say It

Inflation is back at 4.2%, the Fed is suddenly looking less “patient” and more “are we doing this again?," mortgage rates are flirting with the wrong side of uncomfortabl

Elon Musk’s SpaceX IPO, Fed Rate Hikes, Bitcoin Crash & Gold Replacing Treasuries

The economy is not crashing. It is freezing. In this episode of The Higher Standard, Chris and Saied break down the Fed’s Beige Book, a bifurcated consumer, sticky inflat

SpaceX IPO Exposed: Elon’s $28.5 Trillion AI Moonshot or Greatest Rug Pull in History?

In this episode of The Higher Standard, Chris and Saied dive headfirst into the wildest S-1 filing Wall Street may have ever seen: SpaceX, Starlink, XAI, Mars colonies, a

Zuckerberg Just Said That At Meta, Your Job Is Training Its Replacement

AI is no longer just helping you write emails or clean up spreadsheets; it is watching, learning and preparing to do the job itself. In this episode, Chris and Saied brea

AI Just Changed How Everything Gets Valued

This week on The Higher Standard, we break down hotter inflation, Warsh’s awkward Fed handoff, housing cracks, rising delinquencies, and why “resilient economy” may be th

AI May Have Just Broke the Tax System

This week on The Higher Standard, Rajeil was out, Slim was “furloughed,” and Chris and Saied accidentally stumbled into one of the biggest questions nobody in Washington

Jerome Powell’s Last FOMC: Inflation, Recession Pain & the Fed’s Big Lie

In Episode 334 of The Higher Standard, Chris and Saied give Jerome “Transitory” Powell the only farewell THS knows how: part tribute, part roast, part macro autopsy. From

The Fed, AI & Crypto Are Creating the Next Financial Crisis

Chris, Saied and Rajeil dive headfirst into the weirdest corner of the modern economy, where the next Fed chair sounds like a political hostage negotiation, AI is either