E87: Emerging markets, Sri Lanka, 9.1% CPI, market sentiment, NASA's Webb telescope & more

Wait, that's not even a sweater. That's a sweatshirt. (laughs)

No, no, no.

It's not even cashmere. It looks like polyester or something.

Okay, quick. Freeburg, come on the video where you're wearing the same thing as J-Kal so we can make a quick joke and make fun of you.

Hey. (laughs)

Morons. I mean, you guys are so predictably dumb, the two of you.

It's so itchy. (laughs)

(laughs)

Do you have a rash?

Jason made me buy this outfit and I put it on and I'm, like, itching. I'm about to take this thing off.

(laughs)

Polyester, wool, polyurethane.

(laughs) Polyurethane.

What's that made out of?

All in. Let your winners ride. Rain Man, David Sachs. I'm going all in. And I said. We open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you, Vespa. Queen of Quinoa. I'm going all in.

Okay, everybody. Welcome back to the All-In Pod, episode, uh, 87. Here we go. Tons of news going on. Thanks for all the great feedback on episode 86. Uh, we're gonna start with emerging markets. Oh, and yeah, welcome to the program, David Freeburg, sultan of science, the dictator himself from his palace in Sri Lanka, uh, his new palace in (laughs) Sri Lanka. He'll be taking over over there. We'll get into that. And Sachs is in a, in witness protection right now apparently. (laughs) Where are you, Sachs, in this white nondescript room? Can you say where you are?

This is my soundproof padded room.

Yeah. Oh, is that what have ... That's what Biden's done?

(laughs)

Your Biden derangements into May (laughs) , may put you in an asylum? What do you do? You rock back and forth and say, "Inflation, Ukraine, inflation, Ukraine"?

No. We just had the room soundproof for, you know, better podcasting.

Oh, look at you, taking the, taking the job seriously.

I don't think it looks bad. I think it looks good.

Yeah, you could put a little art behind you or something. Just put one of your Monets behind you, you know, the ones you have in storage downstairs.

(laughs)

Okay, emerging markets are facing, uh, some huge challenges right now. Quick mar- quick primer on, uh, three types of markets, developed, emerging, and the frontier market, if you don't know. Developed markets are considered US, Japan, Europe. Their GDP growth is lower, single digits typically. In the emerging market, it's roughly defined as developing but not fully developed. That includes countries like the BRICS, which is Brazil, Russia, India, China, and recently added South Africa. Many other markets are included in that. They were previously called the Third World in the '80s. People didn't like that term. Uh, investors will bet on them having, uh, higher GDP growth, typically two times or three times what the developed world has. China, for example, 2019, 6% growth. US, in 2019, 2.1% growth. And of course, there's frontier markets. These are viewed as small, unstable, illiquid, generally risky. If you look at something like Kenya, Vietnam, those would fall into that category. Uh, Vietnam, 7% GDP growth in 2019 to the US's 2%. Sometimes people like to make bets on them. Here's a nice little chart for y'all to look at. And you can just see China versus Vietnam and the United States, uh, since the '80s. And so why is this all important? Well, the Wall Street Journal reported last week that EMs, the emerging markets, have been feeling massive pressure. We'll get to Sri Lanka in a moment. That's a frontier market, to be clear. Um, but three things. Well, we've got probably a half dozen things going on. Let me just highlight maybe the top five, and then I'll hand it off to the besties. You have high bond and loan yields. The debts, uh, debt rates are increasing in the emerging markets and frontier markets. Think what happens when you got a variable mortgage or you try to get a new market, a new mortgage. In the developing markets, the developing market investors have stopped investing in emerging markets and frontier markets, as you might suspect, during a downturn. And they're even pulling money out. Then you have surging inflation. We all know about that, and we're gonna talk about inflation here in the US 'cause we got the print this morning. And slowing growth. We've also talked about this for the last six months on the program. All these problems get exacerbated when, uh, economic growth slows, and it's slowing globally. And then finally, we have the potential issue of contagion. We don't know exactly what's gonna happen when various countries are facing these challenges, although we did tell you here what would happen with the Ukraine. Shout out to, uh, Sachs and Freebird Fertilizer, wheat oil, all that good stuff. And it's becoming very acute. Perhaps the carry- canary, canary in the coal mine is Sri Lanka. Breaking news. President, uh, Rajapaksa, uh, fled for the Maldives, and it's a state of emergency. Curfews were declare, declared. I think that's been canceled as of the taping of this. Uh, we can get into the state of Sri Lanka. Your thoughts, Freeburg. I know you've been chomping at the bit to discuss this. Yeah, that was a good long intro. I think, um, you know, the, the high level for me, if you look kind of at debt markets around the world, there's about $300 trillion of global debt. And I put this, uh, chart in the, uh, chat here. Nick, you can put it on the, on, on the video. And about 100 trillion of that debt globally is in, um, uh, emerging markets. And so these countries generally have, you know, much more kind of variable, uh, GDP growth, as well as challenges ultimately with their currencies. Most of this debt recently, and, and this has been a trend for a number of years lately, has been issued in their local currency, rather than in US dollars. And so as the currency devalues, it becomes more challenging for an investor to make a return if they're investing from a US dollar denominated base or some other dollar denominated base. So, um, look, the EM, uh, the emerging markets are, are, are heavily saddled. I mean, some of these countries have over, you know, 300% or 250%, uh, debt to GDP. And what's really gone on recently, uh, is that many of them, as net importers of energy and food, are gonna struggle to make the stuff they need to make at home or to feed their people at home because of the rising inflation that's been happening around the world.