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Why Young Americans Feel Locked Out with the Lemonade Stand Podcast | The Real Eisman Playbook Ep 82
Aidan McCaig and Brandon Ewing say young Americans face a difficult start as jobs, housing and AI reshape their prospects.
The Real Eisman Playbook · Steve Eisman
- Aidan McCaig · Lemonade Stand
- Brandon Ewing · Content creator & co-host, Lemonade Stand
The best minutes
- 33:22Software losses could leave private equity unable to refinancePro pick 7 min
- 27:28AI agents could threaten banks’ deposit funding6 min
- 19:36CoreWeave’s 15% debt cost threatens data center economics3 min
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Also worth watching
- 17:02AI exposure spans 65% of the S&P and much of bond issuance2 min
- 42:37Eisman says Walter routed policyholder money to a controlled entity6 min
- 23:41AI firms may use safety rules to block cheaper Chinese models3 min
Skip the job and housing discussion, the AI-and-employment discussion, and the podcasting and new-media discussion.
Full analysis · 8 min read
Real Alpha · Nov 7
Steve Eisman says 65% of the S&P faces AI exposure
- Eisman counts 65% of the S&P as AI exposed, with half of this year’s bond issuance tied to AI.
- The figure is his exposure map, not an official index classification, and the episode gives no holding-by-holding method.
- For young savers facing tight job and housing markets, his long-term S&P advice sits beside near-term concentration risk.
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Young workers face a narrower first rung
One cohost, who says he is 29, describes white-collar entry-level work as an impossible ladder. Among friends aged 23 to 28, he says hundreds of applications are common.
A couple have passed 1,000 applications, and some remain unemployed six months to maybe over a year. Usually they eventually find something, he says, before taking available work instead of the jobs they originally wanted.
That is evidence from his circle, not a national hiring statistic. Still, the episode locates the squeeze at the first rung, where careers and savings normally begin.
Eisman says AI generally is not replacing existing employees. One cohost calls the pattern a low-hire, no-fire economy.
The account does not establish that AI caused each rejection. But it shows how applicants experience slower hiring during an AI transition. That can delay income and push young workers away from planned careers.
Our read
The hiring evidence is anecdotal, but it locates pressure before savings begin. Companies should track junior hiring separately from layoffs and senior vacancies.
Eisman says homes may stop building wealth
Eisman says homeownership may no longer reliably create wealth across much of the country. He expects that to last a very long time, and says the next national move in prices is probably down.
He says buying is probably 50% more expensive today than five years ago. His comparison includes insurance, utilities, and property taxes, not only mortgage rates.
He contrasts 2021 homeowners with mortgages around three percent against buyers facing about seven percent. That lock-in, he says, leaves owners with jobs reluctant to sell.
But the episode gives no local price data, cost series, or timeframe for his national forecast. One cohost presses him on zoning and new supply. Eisman says state or federal action has zero probability.
“the days of buying a house under the assumption that that will be a creator of wealth are done for a very long time.”
Our read
Eisman's housing view warns against treating ownership as an automatic wealth plan. A household budget should account for carrying costs and mobility, not assume appreciation will cover them.
Retirement indexes carry broad AI exposure
Eisman counts technology, major platforms, utilities, lenders, asset managers, and data-center suppliers as AI exposures. That broad basket reaches 65% of the S&P 500, by his count.
He separately says AI-related bonds make up 15% of investment-grade bonds and 50% of this year's issuance. Those are his stress-test figures, not an index-provider category. He gives no company-by-company method or adjustment for overlapping suppliers and lenders.
Under his framing, stocks and bonds may share exposure to the same AI spending cycle. That weakens the usual assumption that the two sides diversify each other.
Eisman's explanation is that OpenAI and Anthropic fear Chinese open-weight models he says cost one-tenth as much. He reads their existential-risk warnings as a push for rules that could exclude those rivals. The episode presents no evidence about company intent, so this remains his interpretation.
Garrison Lovely discussed open-weight models on Future of Life Institute Podcast in October 2026. He said they could weaken frontier pricing if they became good enough. That supports competitive pressure, not Eisman's account of regulatory motives.
Ed Elson on Prof G Markets in November 2026 pointed to Microsoft's $25 billion bond sale after earnings. It illustrates financing needs, not a universal funding shortfall.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy on a16z Podcast in October 2026 said $220 billion in capex still left meaningful demand unmet. His account makes the case for spending, but does not establish returns. Demand supports investment, not every AI-linked valuation.
“you're at 65% of the S&P.”
Garrison Lovely · Future of Life Institute Podcast · Oct 13Two market shifts could erode frontier AI margins
Ed Elson · Prof G Markets · Nov 2Big Tech now depends on capital markets to fund its AI buildout
Andy Jassy · a16z Podcast · Oct 23Customer demand guides Amazon’s AI infrastructure spending
Our read
The 65% figure is an interpretive exposure map, but its breadth makes a conventional stock-bond split less clean than it sounds. The useful question is how much each side relies on continued AI spending.
Rising neocloud debt tests the buildout
For example, Eisman says CoreWeave borrowed earlier in the year at nine percent. Its debt now yields 15%, he says. That 15% is a market yield, not proof the company has refinanced at that rate.
He says new debt at that cost would make a data center fail to pencil out. Eisman says the economics may have worked at nine percent, but he cannot say for sure.
The episode gives no project returns, utilization, contract terms, or debt schedule. Those gaps prevent a precise estimate of borrowing-cost effects.
His distinction is between firms able to absorb pressure and firms dependent on debt markets. He says Google can cut costs, while CoreWeave and Nebius lose money and need financing to meet commitments.
Modal cofounder Erik Bernhardsson gives a hypothetical on Unsupervised Learning in October 2026. He describes raising $1 billion, securing $3 billion of GPUs, and paying $1 billion upfront. That example illustrates leverage, but does not describe CoreWeave's exact contracts.
Our read
The warning is about funding fragility, not a proven default. Financing cost matters alongside customer contracts, utilization, hardware value, and debt timing, which this conversation does not quantify.
Agents could reroute a valuable cash spread
Eisman says agentic AI could move idle cash from brokerage sweeps into money-market funds. His Schwab illustration starts with a made-up $1 million account and $200,000 in cash.
Schwab pays 20 basis points on sweep cash, he says. It invests that money in short-term Treasuries yielding, let's say, four and a half percent.
That illustration isolates the customer's incentive, not a forecast of behavior. The episode does not estimate cash moved or Schwab's lost earnings.
Eisman says cash sweeping is Schwab's largest revenue item today. Commissions once led the business, he says. An agent moving many customers' cash could change a material revenue source, not merely improve user yield.
That threat differs from deposit flight at a bank. Eisman describes deposits as banks' stable, lower-cost funding for loans. Brokerage sweeps instead generate income from idle customer cash.
He says JPMorgan barred outside agents. But the episode gives no adoption estimate, customer-balance data, or likely revenue loss.
“Agentic AI could do that automatically for me.”
Our read
Agent access turns a consumer optimization into a potential funding and revenue shift. The episode explains the mechanism more convincingly than it establishes its scale.
Software losses can erase buyout equity
Eisman says most of these software buyouts happened between about 2018 and 2022. They used half equity and half debt, he says. He says those companies were levered mostly with variable-rate debt.
For example, his simplified $1 billion deal has $500 million in debt and $500 million in equity. If the company falls to $500 million in value, equity is zero and debt remains $500 million. That is deal arithmetic, not a measured loss across private-credit books.
He expects refinancing to start next year, though variable-rate borrowing has already repriced. He thinks owners may refuse fresh equity and walk away. The episode does not say how many companies face this balance sheet or when each loan comes due.
Eisman's Adobe reference is a public stock down 60% from its peak, not a buyout in that cohort. One cohost says an AI alternative handled his thumbnails indistinguishably. That narrow test does not prove Adobe's full suite can be replaced.
Danny Moses and Eisman discussed slower realizations and fund gates on The Real Eisman Playbook in October 2026. They also discussed pressure to keep raising capital. This supports a liquidity concern, not Eisman's software-loss forecast.
Our read
The refinancing example shows how equity can disappear before lenders take losses. But public software declines and private loan marks are not interchangeable measures of portfolio damage.
Eisman keeps the saving rule as costs fall
Eisman still advises young savers to put money away regularly and buy the S&P 500. He says a 24- or 25-year-old has a long horizon and could be in good shape 30 years later.
He sees a recession over the next year as a good possibility. But he says he would not stake his life on it. His advice is not a hedge against concentration. It relies on time, regular savings, and confidence in the U.S. economy.
Yet housing costs and weak entry-level hiring can make contributions hard to sustain. That tension matters more than a generic instruction to invest. A long horizon helps only if a worker can keep saving.
One cohost describes a traditional commercial shoot with about 30 people. He contrasts it with creators producing comparable work in their own studios.
For example, the cohost describes a 25-year-old who runs a marketing company. He says it produced stronger results at roughly a tenth of the cost. That is one company's account, not a general cost curve or proof of durable margins.
Eisman sees lower costs as an opening for young entrepreneurs, not a universal substitute for jobs. Easier production and distribution can lower the cost of trying a business. But they do not guarantee customers or income.
“put a little bit of money away all the time and just buy the S&P 500.”
Our read
The saving rule remains simple, but its assumptions are not. Lower creation costs offer one route to income, while steady investing still depends on young workers having money left to save.
What it means for you
- Map AI exposure. Check how much of your stock and bond allocation depends on AI spending. Separate direct holdings from Eisman's broader categories, then measure overlap.
- Rebuild housing costs. Compare mortgage payments with insurance, utilities, and property taxes. Test whether a move or ownership plan still works if prices do not appreciate.
- Measure idle cash. Compare brokerage sweep rates with alternatives, then measure idle cash balances. The episode shows why yield differences could redirect cash, but supplies no adoption forecast.
- Review software debt. Ask how much portfolio debt is variable-rate, when refinancing is due, and what equity cushion remains. Separate marked values from lenders' actual recovery scenarios.
What to watch
- Whether CoreWeave must seek new debt near the 15% market yield Eisman cited.
- Whether software owners contribute fresh equity when refinancing begins next year.
- Whether customers adopt outside cash-management agents or banks and brokerages block them.
Send this to finance leaders and talent heads planning hiring and cash budgets.
Watch the minute where Eisman gives his 65% figure
Written by Real Alpha from the episode's transcript and the other moments it links, then checked against the transcript. Quotes are the speaker's exact words.
Minute by minute
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Read it with Pro, 7 days free- 2:07Entry-level jobs are hard to land
McCaig and Ewing say young adults struggle to picture their financial futures as white-collar entry-level roles become harder to get. They describe friends submitting hundreds of applications, with some passing 1,000, and remaining unemployed for six months or longer before taking whatever job they can find.
- 4:38Homeownership feels out of reach
McCaig and Ewing say their audience worries it may never be able to afford a home, given prices, mortgage rates, insurance, utilities and property taxes. Eisman says a home may no longer be a reliable source of wealth and predicts national prices could fall.
- 9:10Housing supply may adjust slowly
Eisman says owners with jobs and 3% mortgages have little reason to sell, so he expects housing supply to change slowly, including as older homeowners die. The guests suggest zoning reform and cite Tokyo's national approach; Eisman says a federal change in the U.S. has zero probability.
- 14:29AI is reshaping entry-level hiring
McCaig and Ewing say companies are slowing entry-level hiring while they assess AI, even if the technology is not replacing experienced employees. They describe applicants using AI to tailor and submit resumes, which may then be screened and followed up by AI systems.
- 17:11The market is concentrated in AI
Eisman argues that owning the S&P 500 and bonds may not provide the diversification investors expect. He estimates that AI and related businesses account for about 65% of the S&P 500, and says 15% of investment-grade bonds and 50% of this year's issuance are AI-related.
- 19:21Neoclouds depend on debt markets
Eisman says a CoreWeave debt issue carried a 9% yield, but its yield rose to 15% as the debt price fell. He says CoreWeave and Nebius depend on debt markets to fund data centers, while established technology companies have other businesses and can cut costs.
- 22:39Eisman sees AI warnings as commercial
Eisman argues that OpenAI and Anthropic emphasize existential AI risks to seek regulation that could exclude Chinese open-weight models, which he says cost one-tenth as much. He says LLMs do not think and questions claims that artificial general intelligence is near, while acknowledging that the technology's future is uncertain.
- 27:28AI agents could erode cash-sweep revenue
Eisman says Schwab pays 20 basis points on swept cash while earning about 4.5% on short-term Treasuries. He says an AI agent could move customers' cash into money-market funds automatically, threatening Schwab's biggest revenue item and potentially affecting banks' deposit funding.
- 32:52Private-equity exits are taking longer
Eisman says private-equity holding periods have stretched from three or four years to seven as higher rates weigh on companies with variable-rate debt. He says retail funds may limit withdrawals to 5% per quarter, while institutional investors generally cannot redeem on demand.
- 37:46Software debt faces refinancing pressure
Eisman says many software buyouts from 2018 to 2022 used half equity and half debt, and he worries that falling software valuations could wipe out the equity cushion. He expects refinancing to force private-equity owners to contribute more capital or walk away from some companies.
- 40:55Long horizons favor steady investing
Eisman advises young people to save regularly and buy the S&P 500, saying a 24- or 25-year-old has a long time horizon. He says a recession is possible over the next year but still sees the U.S. economy as dynamic over the long term.
- 42:27Insurance links raise oversight concerns
Eisman says private equity's use of insurers to match long-term funding with long-term loans is not inherently a problem, but he worries about related-party transactions. He recounts that Mark Walter's insurance businesses disclosed three such transactions while 40 were identified, with exposure about 30 times the permitted percentage.
- 48:48Lean media creates openings
McCaig and Ewing say small podcast and creator teams can produce work at far lower cost than traditional shoots with dozens of staff. Eisman and the guests argue that cheaper tools and easier distribution could create opportunities for young entrepreneurs, including digital services for established businesses.
Published Nov 2, 2026.
Transcript · 44 min read
The Real Eisman Playbook, hosted by Steve Eisman, with Aidan McCaig and Brandon Ewing.
Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.
Hi, this is Steve Eisman, and welcome to another episode of The Real Eisman Playbook. So the podcasting world is kind of an interesting world, and we started April of last year, and not that long afterwards, I went on a bunch of different podcasts to try and drum up some publicity for my podcast, hoping that maybe that would help. I mean, what did I know? And I came across a podcast named Lemonade. I knew nothing. Apparently, this is one of the more successful podcasts out there. What did I know? And we reached out to them and they were kind enough to invite me onto their podcast. So I flew out to LA, went to their studio. Funny story, when you go into Lemonade's studio, their entire studio was surrounded by cans of lemonade. And so what did I do? I took a can of lemonade and I drank it, at which point they told me, you're the first one to do that. First and only. So today I'm returning the favor.
I've invited them onto my podcast. So welcome, Aidan McCaig and Brandon Ewing. Pleasure. Pleasure. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. So before we, as I joke with almost all my guests, Not that there's anything going on. No, nothing in the news. But tell my audience a little bit about your podcast and who your audience is. Sure, yeah. We're a younger audience, I think. It's called Lemonade Stand. And what we're trying to do is, since there's something in the news every single day. Is there? Yeah, it turns out. And it can get overwhelming, or it can get depressing, or it can get difficult to keep up with that and know what's going on.
We try to make it understandable and entertaining to this audience to keep them informed on the news. That's our goal. So is it politics and business or just business or just everything? Business, politics, news, tech. Tech. Okay. So let's talk a little bit about things that concern your audience and we'll have a nice little dialogue. Okay. That sounds great. Absolutely. So what would you say is like topic numero uno for your audience these days? That is a tough one. It's a tough question. And I would bet you that flips every other day. Yeah. But give me a topic numero uno. I can give you one.
Read the whole transcript
Yeah, unless you have one you want to go for. I mean, I think the undercurrent, especially having, I'm 29, so I have a lot of friends that are still in their early 20s. Right. And I think the undercurrent of. Every problem they have is it's really hard to even imagine what your financial future will look like. So when you're coming out of college, your prospects for walking into an entry-level position are pretty low right now. Are they? Yeah. They really are. That's what you hear from many of your people. Certainly for white-collar. White-collar entry-level feels like an impossible ladder to get on right now for the jobs they wanted.
Like what? I know people, say they came out of college with a relatively general degree or even something specialized, like maybe they did computer engineering, like they're going to be a software engineer. It's been really challenging to get those roles right now. Any administrative or office role, regardless of the field, it seems pretty challenging. I would say most of my friends in that 23 to 28 range, if they don't have a job, they will have submitted hundreds. A couple of them has passed the thousand threshold of job applications. And they will be out of a job for six months to maybe over a year.
I would say usually by that point they find something, but it takes a really long time to just land a basic job. And what are they finding? I feel like the problem is they take what they can get. So they have maybe a specific vision of what they wanted to do coming out of college. Maybe somebody has, I want to work even as an assistant at like an environmental law firm or something like that. They have a, I don't want to say lofty expectation, but a more definitive direction of where they want it to go. But when you start rounding the 500 mark on your job applications, you're kind of taking anything that will hire you.
Lucky you have a computer. Yeah. As opposed to a typewriter. The only thing I can think of is ultimately like they're not I mean, they're not landing at like a farm or in some sort of like specialized trade job or something like that. I would say ultimately they're trying to stick it out in sort of like a white collar world. But they they lose the dreams and end up taking whatever works. And give me your perspective. No. So the thing I hear from my audience a lot, and it's related to that, it's about financial future. It's really often about housing. Housing. Right now, there's this big question mark that has been for the past few years.
whether or not they'll ever be able to own a home, whether it's even in the cards for them. And they look at the cost of housing in their area, and it just feels like no matter what you're saving, it's not on a feasible path. Or you'd have to take on so much debt. With the rates being what they are now and the prices being what they are now, it just does not seem like they can buy. So people often ask, can I buy? Is it a good time to buy? So by the way, I gave a speech at um it was in toronto a couple weeks ago and um it was like 500 people and i was talking about ai and i was talking about the financial crisis your typical stuff yeah and and then it was like question period and and and someone raised their hand and said is this a good time to buy a house and i said no and then i said do you want me to elaborate and then i did yeah but i i i actually think, and my wife Valerie and I have thought this for a long time, that the day, this is what people don't appreciate, leaving aside whether you can afford it.
Sure. Which is, I actually think that in most parts of the country, the days of what Americans used to do, which is you got married, you had a kid, you bought a house, you're 32. Sure. You live in that house for years until maybe you have maybe 10 years or so until you have maybe another kid or another kid. And then the house has appreciated in value significantly. And then you're able to buy another house. I think the days of buying a house under the assumption that that will be a creator of wealth are done for a very long time. In fact, I think probably the next move in housing prices nationally is down.
Oh, yeah. Doesn't it seem like that? It's so unaffordable. And the crazy thing is, just adding to what your viewers have been saying, it's unaffordable not just because rates are higher. That's easy. Yeah. Because if the only issue was rates are higher, we could all say, okay, we'll just wait. Rates will come down one day, and then we'll buy a house. The problem is property and casualty insurance has gone up a lot. Your utility bill has gone up a lot. Your property taxes have gone up a lot. So leaving aside even... the mortgage price, it's probably 50% more expensive today to buy a house than it was five years ago. Yeah. Yeah. And so why would you buy a house? You got to be out of your mind.
Forget it. You can't even afford it. You're probably going to lose money. Yeah. But there's this expectation. There's this- Because we've lived this way for decades upon a day. That's what their parents did. And their parents did. And it's kind of tough to hear that this string of green lights on housing that has been for generations is not going to be there for you, that you can't buy in and get that appreciative wealth and then have it be. So what do you say to viewers about this? When I say what you say, I say, I don't think so. Let's move on. Don't you always know. We move on to the next question.
Yeah, next question, please. Well, we joke on the show a lot about, you know, talking about some monumental problem and then being like, oh, yeah, we'll figure this out and solve this in 90 minutes. but what i think so on so on that point so i had a podcast with with um a woman who does a does a podcast about like corporate she calls it i think corporate gossip but it's basically about bad things about corporations okay and so we had this whole wonderful conversation with all the terrible things about various people have done corporations and she and she was like like sincere like she really wanted me to help the helper and she said so steve is is there something we can do about this and i said i said no i mean it would be funny to have the eureka moment where in one sentence right solve the whole problem uh yeah well i i'm curious when you you think about these problems like you look at something like the like the housing market and like what it would need to do for it to realistically become affordable?
I have an idea. Yeah, yeah. What direction would you ask for it to move in? So my answer is going to sort of amuse you. Okay. This is like bad humor. I'm ready. I'm ready. You ready? I'm ready. Okay. I got my guard up. So the issue currently, as you know, is that in 2021, rates collapsed. It's year or two. Everybody refinance it to a 3%, 3.5% mortgage, and that's who's sitting in the home. The person who's buying the home is getting a 7% to 7% mortgage. And one thing I learned in grammar school... goal is that seven is a lot more than three. And so the housing market is locked. And there's no way to unlock it. Except a lot of the housing stock is owned by older people who are going to die. And basically, it's the older segment of the baby boom, which is a very, very big segment.
So probably over the next 10 years, a lot of houses will come for sale and they'll sell at whatever price because the people who are living in the house will be dead. And their descendants will sell it and they'll just sell it for whatever they can get because they got to pay the estate taxes. That takes time. You don't think there's anything else other than death that could force them to sell? Because right now people are- And employment. But they have jobs. The problem is that, I mean, what you were saying earlier is about entry-level people having a tough time getting jobs. But the overall employment situation is that people have jobs.
The unemployment rate is very, very low. So as long, you know, put it this way, if you're sitting in a house and you have a job and you have a 3% mortgage and somebody offers you a price that's 30% lower than what you paid, you're not selling because you have a job. You don't have to. So unless there's a massive recession, which certainly is possible, but I don't see it anytime soon, the only thing that's going to change is that people are going to die. So what do you think about the cost of housing has been rising for a while, and it rose a lot through an era of low interest rates as well. So when I think about cost of housing, I think about changing zoning laws, building up, especially in cities that are particularly high demand but have a low supply.
When I look at Los Angeles, even versus a place like New York, but especially against international cities, right? Los Angeles is so flat for a city of like the metro area is like 12 million people, right? And if you allowed people to build apartment buildings. It could be 24. Well, maybe you'd be accommodating a lot more people as well. I don't want that traffic. That's a great point. The problem is that that is a local problem. that problem that you just described about los angeles variations of that are in every major locality in the united states of america could i could i posture you this so relative to other major cities one place that has managed to say relatively affordable, I use that word very intentionally, is Tokyo. And Tokyo, in Japan, their zoning laws are dictated at the national level instead of allowing a city or a city council who obviously has a vested interest in no more building happening in their neighborhood. And by dictating it at a national level, they kind of bypass and ignore a lot of that local pressure to not change zoning, to not allow more housing to be built?
Do you think it's reasonable for the state level or the federal level in the U.S. to introduce some sort of change there? So I'm going to take a page out of the movie? Yeah, yeah. The Big Short? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know the movie. Zero. Zero probability. Okay. Zero probability of it happening. Oh, that happened. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think it would be wonderful if it did, but the probability of it happening is zero. Okay, that's fair. That's fair. There's two things you said that are kind of at odds that I want to drill in on a little bit. Okay. Because you said that insurance is rising. Property taxes are rising.
So these are the things that could force someone to sell. You're saying there's no reason they would have to sell. But if they can't afford insurance, if they can't afford the property taxes, if those are rising, I think in some locales you are seeing small price cuts or bigger prices. People are like- Oh, I think prices are going to come down because of this. Yeah, which means they're motivated in some way. Right, but it's so slow. You just think it's not? Glacial. Okay. It's just glacial. It really is. I had a guest a couple weeks ago. I haven't released it yet. She's like a real housing expert.
I was like, wow, you're negative. She thinks housing prices are going to go down 30%, 50%. Who is it? Her name is Melody Wright. I've interviewed her a dozen times. Oh, yeah. I love Melody Wright. Oh, Melody? Yeah, she's very negative. She's great. Yeah, she's great. I was thinking to myself, I thought I was negative. I walk away from, yeah, she makes me do it. Like, I'm famous for being negative, and she makes me look like the biggest bull in the world. Well, I knew when you said she and negative, I was like, that's Melody. That's very funny. She's good. Yeah, she's great. I don't know if hazard prices are going to go down that much, but they could go down.
They could go down. Yeah. All right, let's go to a different topic. Okay, give me a dollar. Yes, sir. That is topic numero uno, baby. Yeah, sure. Give me another numero uno. Another numero uno. Usually, with those, would be the next one. Yeah. What else do we want to talk about? Maybe like job security? Let's talk about AI or the market, you know. We can talk AI. Okay, all right, yeah. I mean, we talk about AI like. Like, it's water every week. Yeah. There's not a week that goes by now. I mean, you can't talk about the markets without AI. That's all it is. It's all exactly right. The entire market is AI.
But I want to know from, you have kind of a broader audience. Like, what are their concerns about? What do they think about AI? The concerns are everything. Everything. This is, it's such a drastic change. And I think it, like we mentioned with jobs, it's sort of hitting them first because it feels like companies are freezing or slowing at the entry level because they don't know how this is going to shake out. I agree with that. It's not replacing expertise yet, but it's- And it's generally not replacing existing employees. No. But you're right. It means that they're hiring fewer. It's like this low hire, no fire economy.
And so if they're graduating college, it's this disaster. But then additionally, AI allows weird things that didn't exist when we were looking for jobs, or I'm sure when you were looking for jobs, you mentioned a typewriter. You can go on LinkedIn right now and use like AI Easy Apply and apply to a thousand jobs in a, in an instant. Really? Yeah. It's, it's, oh, you can, you can have it create a million different resumes, customized for every job you're doing. And so HR department by AI agents in HR department. Yes. So your, so your AI resume is getting reviewed by an AI HR employee. And if you're lucky enough, you get an interview with an AI HR person. Like it's like you're talking to an AI and they're interviewing you and it records your data. And so it's, it's like this through the looking glass environment where they're they're entering so for them i mean some of them are becoming native to it it's they're they're adapting to it quicker than you know even we are understanding it but it's changing things so quick because you're old yeah you're old all the time all the time so i'm still so young i'm hanging on i've got a few months you got a year left so that's what we're seeing we're seeing it just change everything i mean it's
changing uh music movies tv everything it's it's just a weird time and i don't think anyone at any age knows exactly how it's going to play out but certainly uh you know the thing that most people have if they are stable or have a job they have a 401k and most of it's in sm500 and most of
“40% of the S&P is tech. And then if you add up all the companies like Google and Amazon”
And what I tell people is, if something bad happens, you are not okay. eisman. Ramp.com slash eisman. And that's kind of where we are. Jensen Huang gets hit by a bus. We're all in the poorhouse. Is that what you're telling me? Is that? No. I think that would be easier to survive than OpenAI going back.
Okay. Yeah. I think it's so funny you brought that up because I made these notes before and for questions to ask you literally the consolidation of the market. Are you worried about that?
“And you ain't building no data center with 15% debt. Forget it. It just doesn't pencil out anymore.”
You know why you have to worry about it? Because AI is going to destroy the world. So we'll all be dead. And so what difference does it make? Have you read If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies? I haven't read that. We interviewed the author. What did he say? Oh, well, if anyone builds it, everyone will die. He actually thinks it's real. No, it's- He's a true believer. Yeah, he basically- He's a true believer. I think he's out of his mind. He might be. Yeah, yeah, definitely. He could be wrong. I think that both authors, I think it's two authors, right?
Yeah. They build out the case for the way that the underlying technology arrives at decisions is very difficult to understand, even for the engineers working on it. And because of this nature of the process being very vague, and it continually building on itself after a certain point, it will not act against humans intentionally necessarily, but start making decisions that come with the negative externalities that do affect massive portions of humans.
“And the Chinese open weight models are literally one-tenth the price.”
If I was... running one of these companies. And I seriously thought that, I mean, think about the sentence I'm about to say. Sure. That the product that I'm spending hundreds of billions of dollars to create is going to destroy planet Earth? Yeah. My next sentence would not be, oh, by the way, how much of an IPO allocation would you like? Right, but my only thing is, I think you're a better man than somebody else. That's what worries me. I mean, the common analogy is like we, you know, we plowed for it wasn't private companies. I'll give you that. But we plowed forward and like made nuclear weapons.
Yeah. And we're still standing. Some people are equating the consequences. And I agree. I agree with that. Maybe if we approach this problem and treat it in that way and analyze the consequences in the same way, maybe it'll be fine if the threat's real. I mean, OK, we get this one's impossible to solve. Because I've seen a million podcasts, people talk about whether it's going to kill us.
“If I do nothing, Schwab will pay me 20 basis points on my cash.”
Because that's the other thing I've heard you speak about as one of the things you're most worried about. Only every other week. Yeah, it's a big thing for you, and I want to hear the risks in that. Because sometimes it feels like you're actually pretty positive.
For all the things going on, you're more of like... It's not that I'm positive. I just don't think it's Armageddon. Sure, that's fair, yeah. Which these days is being positive. That is being positive. No, honestly. But with private equity, it feels like you're a little more like on the, this is a scary thing. Or there's a problem here. There's definitely a problem. Yeah.
“So now all these companies are going to start to refinance starting next year.”
The vintage is terrible. I think if you were looking, because we started the episode off by talking about how our younger viewers feel about the future. And you had asked kind of what our outlook or advice is to them when they talk about these problems or we talk about the problems.
I'm kind of wondering what you, because you're laying all these situations out or this is your evaluation of what's going to happen in the future and it's pretty daunting. If I'm a young person coming to you and I'm like, I want to plan my financial future, I have a pretty normal job, what are you telling that person? I tell people pretty much the same thing all the time, which is you put a little bit of money away all the time and just buy the S&P 500. And despite all the AI problems, if you're a young person who's 24, 25 or whatever, your time horizon is very, very long. And so, you know, every month, as you save, put a little bit more in, buy some more S&P 500, and forget it.
Just forget it. And you will find 30... Years from now, you'll be in really good shape. Okay. That's what I tell people. And you still believe that now? I still believe that. I think the, I mean, leaving aside all the problems with AI and is it a bubble or not a bubble, the U.S. economy is the most dynamic economy in the world, period. Ask yourself the following question. Where would you rather live, here or France? Well, maybe not France. He's moving to Sweden. I know he's moving to Sweden. Sweden. But I'm not about to- Sweden's a good choice. I'm not about to move all the money into the Scandinavian stock exchange that they're thinking about.
I might for Switzerland. But yeah, I get what you're saying. I mean, it still spooks me. It still spooks me. I'm not telling you not to be spooked. I'm just saying if you have a very long term, which is what we're talking about. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm thinking like 50 years. I mean, if you're asking me what's going to happen to the market over the next year, I say there's a good possibility we have a recession. I think that's possible. Yeah. I wouldn't stake my life on it, but I certainly think it's certainly possible. So, okay, just back to private equity real quick, because I thought this is...
Yeah, yeah. I want to go back to something you said on our show, October 2025, or the first time you were on, and it was about private equity. You were more optimistic at that time. It was earlier days. Okay.
“He took policyholder money, he lent it to an entity that he controlled, and that entity bought the L.A. Dodgers and the L.A. Lakers.”
You've been investigated, I've been investigated, it's fine. Yeah, it's a Dodgers thing. It's a Dodgers thing. Okay, that actually helps a lot. I was sort of trying to understand, wrap my mind around what was going on there. It doesn't put my mind super at ease, but I do get it. I wasn't trying to put you at ease. Because that's what I'm kind of getting out of this conversation is like, but what about this problem? And you sit across from me, you're like, yeah.
And then I'm like, please give me an answer. And then it's like, no, it could be bad. Probably is. Oh, God, that's funny. So let's switch gears. So we're podcasters. That's what we do. You know, sometimes I go on CNBC and I look at it and I enjoy going on CNBC. You see, you got me wrong. But they have these like fancy schmancy cameras. They've got a whole bunch of different people, you know, technician people walking around. They got reporters. Big office. Big office, you know, big studio. And then I look at our podcast, which is basically me and my CEO, who's my wife. And that's it. And we produce all the content.
And then we have a nice camera at home when we do the weekly wrap. We have a nice camera that records it. And we have an editor, a couple of other people who work for us, and we're done. You guys were even earlier. Tell me a little about your experience and what lessons people can draw from how you succeeded. Actually, I think there was a really good demonstration of this recently. So I'm working with a friend that's a YouTuber. and he was doing a more traditional shoot with like a corporate funding behind it for a commercial. And they hired out this entire team. Like there's probably 30 people on set, multiple cameras, multiple mics, huge lighting rig.
And it's not to say that you can't make use of these things, but I remember thinking about the spend of that day on their side, since I knew part of what the spend was. And I'm like, okay, that's just the starting point. And then all the parts I don't know about, I have an idea of like industry rates. And it was all to produce this tiny section of a commercial that in total was like 30 seconds long. And then his part was only a few of those 30. And I compare that to what we shoot in our own studio. With the lemonade cans. With the lemonade cans. Only one of them is drunk. Which means you don't have to buy anything to drink for a long time.
Yeah, yeah. You have something to drink for you. The only one that drinks it. You can come for the next hundred years. Hundred years. That'll be a bunker if things go wrong. But the difference in producing our own podcast or working among our friends that are YouTubers when we just do normal shoots or game shows or something like that, the cost difference is wild to me. We need way fewer people to pull off a product that ultimately doesn't look very different. And I think there's a degradation for sure. It's like you can scrape the bottom and cut costs even more and make. something genuinely bad, but I think you can get most of the way to that quality with so much less.
And it's very surprising to me that I described it as almost like this K-shaped media industry right now, where the more institutional money in the space still is willing to spend these six-figure budgets on small shoots, and it's still kind of functioning, but there's this aggressive newer generation of people building competitive media companies that I think are going to eat those guys' lunch, and it's starting to happen. We just did a guest episode with this guy named Anthony, and he runs a media marketing company that he just started. He's 25. They've only been running it for a year and they compete basically on price to get new clients. And they are incredibly successful at online marketing, way, way more successful than their competitors in terms of the actual results they are producing at like a 10th of the cost. And this is because these tools and the generation that has grown up with them, they're so, I mean, they're adults now and they're very capable and they're willing to do it at a way lower cost.
You know, interesting that I think one positive thing maybe we could take away from all this is that the cost of doing pretty much anything is so much lower than it once was. I mean, it's possible we may be entering like an age of like the young entrepreneur, people starting businesses that would not have made any sense whatsoever years ago because the cost was just too high. Now the costs are one tenth. You can make a real living. And I think you may find a lot of people going out, especially if young people can't find jobs, going out on their own and seeing what they can do. I don't think that's crazy at all.
I do think that the ability to reach an audience, whether it's through content or with products, is like it's instant now. It's much easier to get distribution. It's much easier to get access. I think a business story that ties in is, I don't know if you've seen, but Netflix stock is not doing so well. Really? I hadn't noticed. They did a big layoff. And I think what they said was, you know, YouTube is now 14% of TV watching. They're only seven. And it's, you know, YouTube spends nothing on content. It's all people creating it. They just shove it on YouTube. But they can't compete on speed. Everyone can make the thing that some audience wants, even if it's not that.
biggest audience. They can make it quicker and faster. So that's an interesting direction that it's going. The message from the people, like the CEO of Patreon, Jack Conte, the president of Shopify, Harley Finkelstein, that we interviewed a while ago. I think these are guys that have vested interests in their company succeeding, of course, but their outlook on their company's success is based on this premise. It's like, if we build these base platforms for entrepreneurs to build businesses out of at basically no cost to them individually. Anybody who has your ability to like leverage and execute an idea, especially if it has to do with anything digital, is just so easy compared to what it was 20, 30 years ago.
And there are a ton of like, you know, I've heard there's a ton of traditional businesses that are owned by boomers that are about to retire or die. and all of them could probably do with the update on new technology, you know, getting off the fax machine and starting to use. Ah, the fax machine. So I think these are areas that are also opportunities. I think entrepreneurship is going to have a really big moment. I agree with, you know, not everybody wants to be an entrepreneur. There's different risks there. Not everybody wants to. Guys, thank you. That was great. Oh, man, really appreciate it.
It's always a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you so much for having us. Absolutely. We'll have you again and hopefully I'll be back on your show again. Yeah, come back to LA. We'll talk again. I need some more lemonade. I'm sure there'll be some more news. Well, you have to drink all the cans. I just thought that was the funniest thing. I mean, there are hundreds of cans on the walls. Why not? I get a can, I start drinking, and you guys are, like, in shock. Like, unrefrigerated set can. Nobody does that. This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
A host and guests may hold positions in stocks discussed, opinions expressed on their own and not recommendations. Please do your own due diligence and consult a licensed financial advisor before making any investment decisions.
