Interest Rates, Debt, and Housing with Christopher Thornberg | Part 1 #948

In Part 1 of this episode, economist Christopher Thornberg joins Bruce Norris to break down the current state of the housing market. They discuss market stability, the impact of low interest rates and refinancing, growing affordability challenges, and why rising federal debt poses long-term economic risks investors should not ignore. 

Christopher Thornberg, Ph.D. is a nationally recognized economist and public speaker, best known for accurately forecasting the 2007 housing crash. He is the Founder of Beacon Economics, one of California’s leading economic research firms, and a trusted advisor to governments, businesses, and financial institutions nationwide. Dr. Thornberg is a frequent media commentator and a contributor to major economic outlooks, offering data-driven insights on real estate, labor markets, and economic policy. 

In this episode:

• Bruce Norris welcomes economist Christopher Thornberg of Beacon Economics.
• A look at today’s real estate market stability and underlying risks.
• How low interest rates and refinancing have shaped housing trends.
• Ongoing challenges facing buyers, sellers, and affordability.
• Public debt concerns and what they mean for the broader economy.
• Why federal borrowing may be unsustainable without fiscal reform.

The Norris Group originates and services loans in California and Florida under California DRE License 01219911, Florida Mortgage Lender License 1577, and NMLS License 1623669.  For more information on hard money lending, go www.thenorrisgroup.com and click the Hard Money tab.


Video Link

Radio Show

Transcript

Narrator: 0:01

Welcome to The Norris Group real estate podcast, a show committed to bringing you insights from thought leaders shaping the real estate industry. In each episode, we'll dive into conversations with industry experts and local insiders, all aimed at helping you thrive in an ever-changing real estate market. continuing the legacy that Bruce Norris created, sharing valuable knowledge, and empowering you on your real estate journey. Whether you're a seasoned pro or a newcomer, this is your go-to source for insider tips, market trends and success strategies. Here's your host, Craig Evans.

Joey Romero: 0:43

Welcome everybody to The Norris Group Real Estate Podcast. Today, we have a really special guest. We have Christopher Thornburg from Beacon Economics, as well as a special guest host, again, Bruce Norris. Christopher Thornberg is the founding partner with Beacon Economics and widely known as The Economist and speaker who's been called everything from “Dr. Doom” to a contrarian, but still says that his favorite thing to be called is correct. He's known for sharp, data driven economic views, and his deep expertise on economic and revenue, forecasting, regional economics, economic policies and labor and real estate markets, consulting for private industry as well as cities, county and public agencies, he became nationally recognized for accurately forecasting the subprime mortgage market crash that began in 2007 and for being one of the few economists on record to predict the global recession that followed, most recently during the 2020 COVID19 shock. He correctly predicted the rapid V shape recovery, the inflation tied to heavy government stimulus and the resulting sharp rise in interest and mortgage rate now affecting the US markets. Please welcome Chris and Bruce.

Bruce Norris: 1:50

Hi, Christopher, how you doing?

Christopher Thornberg: 1:52

I'm doing fantastic. Bruce, good to be here with you again.

Bruce Norris: 1:56

We've known each other for a long time.

Christopher Thornberg: 2:00

Pre Great Recession, if that is possible. But yes, absolutely.

Bruce Norris: 2:05

You know what's interesting about you is that I'm always interested in your answers more than my own. I don't know if you remember, we were on a news podcast, and the guy asked me a question, and I said, you know, I really like Christopher to answer that because I wanted to know what you thought.

Christopher Thornberg: 2:22

Yeah, no, I appreciate that. But then again, as an economist, I have lots of important opinions, but I'm basically incapable of doing anything of real value. So it, I think it's, it's the blend of the ground level expertise with perhaps some of that 30,000 foot perspective that can bring the greatest value to to folks out there, as the case may be. So I also obviously respect a lot of what you've accomplished over the years. So you know, again, I appreciate that, but I also know my limitations.

Bruce Norris: 2:58

Well, you know what's what's interesting is, there's a lot of questions I don't have the answers to, but I would really like to know them. So I'm going to go in reverse order of the subject. I want to know. We're not going to answer this right now, but just so you can have it in your mind, the future job, potential loss of artificial intelligence, is big on my concern list. The risk of the United States losing world currency status. So none of these small topics, you don't get to ask these questions to normal people, but you can ask them to you.

Christopher Thornberg: 3:33

Right. Yeah.

Bruce Norris: 3:34

So the US debt and the risk of inflation, all of those things are big, big things. So first we'll talk about a little bit about real estate, where we are and and then some of those ramifications that could come our way, so.

Christopher Thornberg: 3:50

Sure.

Bruce Norris: 3:50

So real estate prices. How stable Do you feel real estate prices are right now?

Christopher Thornberg: 3:55

I think they're stable. You know, when you think about the real estate market, when you're thinking about the prices you're seeing, obviously that is a function of demand for housing and the supply of housing. And today, while it is true that demand for housing is down because interest rates are up and fewer people can afford to get into housing. At the same time, supply is also down. We know that over the last, really 15 years, since the end of the Great Recession, this nation has not built enough housing. Our stocks of available inventory are still incredibly tight, and overall, the balance, if you will, of limited supply versus limited demand still leans in the direction of supply, and that is exactly what's keeping prices up at this high level, I would be far more worried about housing if I thought that the people who were buying were doing so on the basis of speculative fever, the way, of course, we saw people back in 2008 and 2009 but I don't see that. I don't think anybody's buying a house today because they think it's going to go up by 20% in value over the course of the next year and a half. That's now what's happening, people are buying homes because they want a home, which is the right reason to do that. The data we're looking at in terms of recent buyers and looking at the amount of income that these recent buyers are using to buy that home tell me that, again, people don't seem to be getting out over in front of their skis. In fact, it's interesting, the new buyers today are spending just a little bit more in terms of a percent of their income on housing than there were, say, eight years ago. Believe it or not. Now, the argument, of course, here is that people can't afford this housing, but remember that those prices reflect, again, that limited inventory, and so there's a small selection of people who are able to buy they tend to be higher income, and as a result of that, their their burdens simply aren't as as high as one might think, if you were just sitting down looking at prices and interest rates.

Bruce Norris: 6:30

You know, one of the things that's new in this cycle, you and I really haven't had a chance to talk in a while, is you can go to YouTube and see how disastrous the market is every other line you know the foreclosures are nearing or they're going to explode. Be a repeat of 2008 and nine. And I'm like, what?

Christopher Thornberg: 6:47

Yeah, not, not, not a semblance of that. We have a lot of good data on the quality of debt in the mortgage market right now. The answer is, you haven't seen a big increase in mortgage debt. In fact, it's growing at a very moderate basis. You see very good scores, FICO scores for the people who are buying it suggests that is very well qualified people buying homes at this particular point in time. There's almost no subprime market operating at this particular point in time. So, yeah, the housing market is fundamentally stable, although it's obviously stable at a fairly high cost, again, reflective of that lack of inventory. And as a result of that, the people who I think are struggling, if you will, are people who are trying to get into those first time homes. Well, people, people who are really been frozen out.

Bruce Norris: 7:42

The people are that are struggling. Also, if people make a living selling and listing homes, their group income is down by 40 or 45% which is great depression level unemployment.

Christopher Thornberg: 7:56

True for the industry.

Bruce Norris: 7:58

Right, for the industry, that's right.

Christopher Thornberg: 7:59

Yeah. And of course, it's also struggling with the changes in commission structures, and really in general, with what I call some pretty fundamental changes in the industry. Now look, for all that being said, you and I both know that for the real pros in the industry, the folks who are, have been in in a while. They know how it works. They have their systems. They have their networks, the top sellers, buyers, if you will, in the market, they're doing okay. They're doing fine.

Bruce Norris: 8:29

Yep.

Christopher Thornberg: 8:30

But yeah, if you are a person who does a couple sales a year, you're not getting anything right now.

Bruce Norris: 8:37

That's right.

Christopher Thornberg: 8:37

And so the industry is is going to contract candidly, I think that's something that everybody in the space needs to accept.

Bruce Norris: 8:48

Probably one of the biggest impacts is that you had a chance for nearly two years to refi your house over and over again. And I wanted to ask you this, because this is one of the observations that I had was that as people were refiing from four and a half to three and three quarters to two and three quarters, they made long term decisions to add something to their house at no monthly cost. They was like,'Oh, my God, I always want an extra room or a pool. And we can do it. We can refi this extra money, and it doesn't cost us a dime.' And I think that's lent itself to permanency. Those people are not going anywhere.

Christopher Thornberg: 9:27

Well, they're not going anywhere because for a lot of these folks, it doesn't make any financial sense, right to walk away from that incredible low interest mortgage. And to be clear, this goes back to some of the fundamental missteps on the part of the Federal Reserve, going back to, of course, the pandemic. I said this back then, I continue to say it the Federal Reserve violently overreacted to the pandemic. It was not that big of an economic crisis. It wasn't the depression causing event. Why the supposedly very bright economists who operate in the Federal Reserve would ever have bought into that nonsense is beyond me. But the Federal Reserve, of course, overdid it. They poured way too much money into the economy, which initially depressed interest rates, and then, of course, created inflation, which caused them to step on the brakes, which caused interest rates to shoot up. And it was that violent change in interest rates, pushing them from a reasonable five, five and a half percent, 5% down below 3% and then allowing them to shoot up at 7%. Well, that is a really, really poor way of handling an incredibly important asset market like housing, and we're continuing to deal with the consequences of that now, for those who got in on it and have the 3% mortgage, well, pretty lucky folks. And you know, I see that smile in your face. Bruce, so I'm gonna guess you're one of them.

Bruce Norris: 10:59

No , well, I don't own any money, but you know, what's interesting is why I smiled. 40% of homes are owned, free and clear in this country, which is sort of defies logic, you had a chance to get a mortgage under three, and you go, No, and I did that.

Christopher Thornberg: 11:19

Well, there's one place that being an economist is a good thing, because I saw those numbers and I knew they were never going to come back.

Bruce Norris: 11:29

Yeah.

Christopher Thornberg: 11:29

And one thing about cheap debt is cheap debt is an investment.

Bruce Norris: 11:34

It absolutely is with a margin.

Christopher Thornberg: 11:36

Yeah.

Bruce Norris: 11:37

Oh, no, exactly. I couldn't fault anybody for doing that. I just I came from a place where I had debt, and when we had a project that really turned out well, and she was with me from the start of me taking risk. And so I said, Okay, what do you want to do with this physique? He's the first thing I want to do is play off her home. So that was many years ago, and I've never done anything other than that since, you know. So it's just one of those things. But you realize the housing is really a very stable place at 40% owner, free and clear, and a lot of people have the mortgages that they have, you're going to have very little pieces of inventory cause the whole pack of problem, unless we get nervous about whatever they're doing, so.

Christopher Thornberg: 12:26

Yeah.

Bruce Norris: 12:28

Do you look at a chart in particular and go, Okay, that's significant in saying that the prices are going to escalate. Or look at a chart and go, I'm concerned about that. The prices are going to go down.

Christopher Thornberg: 12:45

You know, I would note that it takes an extraordinary set of economic circumstances to cause housing prices to fall. You well, that basic logic was clearly blown up over the course of the great recession. But that said, that's only because the Great Recession represented exactly that kind of shock to the system. Look, if you go back in time, you remember all the asset backed securities, and all those asset backed securities were built on models that said that home prices can't fall, which we know is nonsensical. We've seen it in small places. That poor modeling is what caused a huge demand for these asset backed securities, which caused a huge flood of subprime loans, which push prices up to levels that were clearly unsustainable, not to mention bringing a bunch of supply online. So it was overpriced and overbuilt, and of course, when the wheels fell off the train, it created catastrophe across the entire system. Today, none of those situations exist.

Bruce Norris: 13:56

Correct.

Christopher Thornberg: 13:56

Again, people aren't over borrowing. We certainly aren't over building. If anything, we're still under building relative to where we were 20 years ago. Again, not a lot of supply. Ultimately says that these prices are sustainable. No major foreclosure crisis means they're not coming down.

Bruce Norris: 14:15

I agree with that. You know, one of the things that you know, I wrote a report called the California crash in 2006 and then prices went up. And I'm looking at the metrics of that going okay, I have to understand what's going on. So I interviewed a lender in front of an audience of several 100 people, and I thought it was going to be about 20 minute interview, and my first question was 'Stated income loans. Where does the stated income number come from?' And without batting an eye, she said, 'Oh, we just make it up.'

Christopher Thornberg: 14:44

Yeah.

Bruce Norris: 14:46

And I just there was a pause, probably for 20 seconds as I contemplated the meaning of that. It means that everyone else knows that that number is bogus, both all of the brokers that create it and all the buyer of the loans. Okay, I don't have to ask anything else.

Christopher Thornberg: 15:05

Exactly.

Bruce Norris: 15:06

We're in big trouble.

Christopher Thornberg: 15:07

Exactly, exactly. But you know what? You know this kind of brings me to the fundamental point, because we just saw that crisis, and because we just saw that crisis, it's not going to happen again.

Bruce Norris: 15:25

I agree with that.

Christopher Thornberg: 15:26

People are aware of it. People are paying attention to it. People are not buying into this the way they were then. Am I worried about our economy right now? Oh, yeah. Am I worried about real estate? No. We learned that lesson for now. Perhaps in 20 or 30 years, we'll forget it and we'll be back to some other real estate mess. But that's not this world. Our problems right now are elsewhere in the economy.

Bruce Norris: 15:57

Okay.

Christopher Thornberg: 15:58

And it's those other places that we need to be focused, to be thinking about what's going to happen next.

Bruce Norris: 16:05

I'll cover it just a little bit more about the real You know the buy the first time buyer age has estate, because I do want to get on those topics.

Christopher Thornberg: 16:12

Sure. gone from 29 to 40, and I think that's I think that's detrimental, because I remember getting a chance to buy my first house. I had a bad start. I got fired five times in a row, and for me to own my first house was like I had arrived as a man. That really is a true statement. When I mowed my lawn for the first time, I cried. It was that meaningful to me, and by the I don't, you know Bruce, I got, I gotta be honest with you, I'm time I'm 30. I own a free and clear house because I got in when the prices really escalated. There's a lot of not sure where that data comes from. I've heard that statistic. people that aren't even starting that journey now until they're 40. What statistic is that? What's, what is that? Statistics on the age of a first time buyer.

Bruce Norris: 17:03

I just looked it up. It could be wrong, but it's, I was repetitive, I can tell you that.

Christopher Thornberg: 17:07

Yeah, but, but I don't know where it came from.

Bruce Norris: 17:09

Okay.

Christopher Thornberg: 17:10

And as a result of that, I'm a little suspicious. And what I would actually say, when you look at the data, and we know that millennials were behind the curve. They were obviously the most scarred by what happened during the Great Recession. Thus they were less likely to jump in than past generations again, because the memory of what happened was so prevalent in their world. But the data right now suggests that actually, younger folks are starting to catch up with normal levels of ownership to where we were 20 years ago. So I've heard that statistic, but between you and me, you know they say that figures don't lie, but liars can figure and every time I hear a number like that, my first question is, where did it come from? And I truly believe it, and I will tell you I've heard that before, and I'm not sure I buy it.

Bruce Norris: 18:02

Okay.

Christopher Thornberg: 18:02

It's as simple as that.

Bruce Norris: 18:03

Well, I'd be happy for them if that's true. I think what happens too is that, you know, there's a lot of things that cost now a lot more than they used to. I don't have a car payment, but if I did, okay, I'd have to put that on my application for a loan. If I had credit card debt, I didn't realize credit card debt was charged in interest of like, 28% so you can see where they would not qualify very easily if they had a car payment and some credit card debt, like 'what?'.

Christopher Thornberg: 18:33

That's that's true, but we also have to remember that there was the peak in terms of the amount of household debt relative to household income was in about 2009.

Bruce Norris: 18:47

Right.

Christopher Thornberg: 18:48

And since that point in time, debt levels relative to household income levels have been declining pretty steadily. And in fact, households today and that have debt burden still narrow, record low level. You don't see a lot of overall household debt. So yeah, even credit card debt, for example, prior to the Great Recession, outstanding credit card debt was about 8% of disposable personal income in this nation. Today, it's five and a half percent. So we even have less credit card debt than we used to. American household don't have a debt problem right now.

Bruce Norris: 19:33

Really? Where did that information come from?

Christopher Thornberg: 19:37

That comes from the New York Fed consumer credit panel. I'm happy to share that data.

Bruce Norris: 19:42

Okay.

Christopher Thornberg: 19:43

It's a very, very good data set. It also comes from the Federal Reserve flow of funds data. I'm not making this stuff up.

Bruce Norris: 19:48

No, I know that.

Christopher Thornberg: 19:49

There's plenty of data sources out there that back up exactly, I'm said. But to your point, there is this perception that Americans are suffering, that America. Are falling behind that American consumption in real terms, is falling. We hear over and over that incomes are aren't rising as fast as prices. Oh, the problem with all those statements is it's false. It's completely false.

Bruce Norris: 20:12

Yeah, I just noticed then you went up by 10% in a year. The median income went from 90...

Christopher Thornberg: 20:20

Median household income, yep, absolutely went through the roof. And you will immediately hear someone will say, Well, that's because the top 10% and everybody else is falling behind. But actually, again, you know, listen, this is some data that just came out from the census. Over the last decade, the top 20% of American households have seen about a 30% increase in the real income over the last decade. The bottom 40% are up about 25%.

Bruce Norris: 20:49

Okay.

Christopher Thornberg: 20:50

In real terms. Now, I gotta tell you, obviously we'd like to see a little more equality kicking into our system. But that being said, just because the rich are rich doesn't mean the poor are getting poorer. Everybody is doing better in this particular economy, and that's something we should all celebrate and appreciate. My worry is again, about the real debt crisis we have in the United States right now, which is not household debt. It is not mortgage debt, it's public debt in particular, it's the federal government's massive debt pile that they're building up at this particular point in time. Look again, we've known each other a very long time, and like you, I started see looking at real estate, realizing something was really wrong. Oh, really about 2004 to be honest with you, 2004 I smelled something weird. 2005 I was becoming panicked, of course. 2006 is when I made the call that the end is nigh. Didn't happen till 2008 but it happened.

Bruce Norris: 21:58

But it should have. It should have.

Christopher Thornberg: 22:00

It should have, yeah, but, you know, the economy has a lot of momentum, and today I'm in a very similar position about the, my opinion about the economy is very similar to where I was in 2005 which is, there is a growing sense of dread. We have an enormous problem out there, and that problem is debt yet again, but it's not private debt, it's public debt. And I get it. Economists have been talking about the federal debt and the federal deficit forever and ever and ever. You go back to the Reagan administration and all people were carrying on and on and on about it. And after a certain amount of time, you get tired of hearing economists talking about the same thing over and over again. It's the boy who cried wolf one too many times. But people have to appreciate just how intense the situation is right at this second look. Right now, the government is on track to borrow over $2 trillion this year. We're going to have over $40 trillion in federal debt at the end of this next fiscal year,$40 trillion it's an insane amount of money, and this debt accumulation is completely broken loose from anything resembling whatever called it the economic cycle. We have seen a structural increase in federal debt starting about 2015. Started under Obama and the Tea Party, where basically the Democrats were increasing spending and the Republicans were cutting taxes on rich people, over and over again. And it has gotten worse and worse and worse, and now we're really are getting to a point that you look at this and go, 'Wow, it's just not sustainable'. The One Big Beautiful Bill continues that trend, and it's like no one seems to think that there are any consequences to this excessive amount of borrowing. But there will be, there must be, you can't continue to do this. But let's understand what this means from from a household perspective.

Bruce Norris: 24:25

Okay.

Christopher Thornberg: 24:27

Understand something we often hear, for example, about, you know, all the US a capitalistic economy. And you know, capitalism doesn't work for us anymore. That's why we're going to vote for, you know, a socialist around New York City and so on and so forth, right? But this isn't a capitalist economy. We have very large socialist systems. In fact, in last year, in 2025 one out of $5 of household income came directly from the. Federal Government in form of a transfer, $4.4 trillion out of$22 trillion, 4.4 trillion of that, one out of $5 came directly from the federal government, Medicaid, Medicare, Section 8, housing, food stamps, you name it. Piles and piles and piles of programs that are are paid to Americans, and this is being spent basically more or less on the basis of massive amounts of borrowing.

Bruce Norris: 25:30

Right.

Christopher Thornberg: 25:32

When we can no longer borrow, the government can no longer give us these subsidies, and that's when you really start to see politics getting ugly. Look if you think about $2 trillion Do you know how, roughly, how many households are on the United States, right? 130 million.

Bruce Norris: 25:50

I thought it was a little more than that. But okay.

Christopher Thornberg: 25:53

Okay, say 135 million. But do the math.

Bruce Norris: 25:56

Yeah.

Christopher Thornberg: 25:56

Divide one by the other. We're talking every household right now is getting a $12,000 subsidy from the federal government.

Bruce Norris: 26:08

Well, social security, because Social Security is not part of what... Let me just...

Christopher Thornberg: 26:10

...you already have fully as well. and Medicaid. Yeah, absolutely, that's in there.

Bruce Norris: 26:13

Okay.

Christopher Thornberg: 26:14

So, you're talking about a huge amount of money that, moral every American household, again, is being subsidized to the tune of what I am again, 8, 9,$10,000, I gotta do the math.

Bruce Norris: 26:27

Okay.

Christopher Thornberg: 26:29

Every single year right now, on the basis of federal borrowing. So we are living beyond our means. It's just that we're not borrowing to live beyond our means the way we were in 2007.

Bruce Norris: 26:40

Right.

Christopher Thornberg: 26:40

It's the federal government doing it on behalf of us.

Bruce Norris: 26:44

Right. And as lots of a lot of that is locked and loaded, because you're paying interest on almost 40 trillion of debt. So that's going to be 2 trillion a year with, with or without a negative cash flow.

Christopher Thornberg: 26:58

And then the question you have to ask yourself is, how is it that interest rates haven't come up even more with all this borrowing going on? And the answer is, well, the AI bubble.

Bruce Norris: 27:13

Okay.

Christopher Thornberg: 27:14

In the last couple of years, because of the rising value of equities, there's been a massive inflow of capital into the United States. Massive trillion plus dollars of hot money is pouring into the United States right now, net chasing our ultra hot financial markets.

Bruce Norris: 27:35

Okay.

Christopher Thornberg: 27:36

And to the power of fungibility, that is more or less going towards funding the federal deficit. So from my perspective, how I how I look at our economy right now, how does this whole thing shake out? Well, right now we're riding the wave, right? No matter what happens in our economy, the stock market keeps going up, keeps giving these returns. Everybody's excited about this and that, but we have the second highest PE ratio ever in our equity markets. It's clearly not sustainable these promises of AI. And don't get me wrong, I think AI is a transformative technology, but that's a completely different conversation than can these companies in the middle of AI make a penny off of it, which is what those equity valuations are about, right?

Bruce Norris: 28:23

Yeah.

Christopher Thornberg: 28:24

And I don't think we, they have yet to figure out how to make money off of this, for all the gobbledygook over AI. Has anybody made a penny off of it?

Bruce Norris: 28:34

If you own the stock, I guess.

Christopher Thornberg: 28:37

Well, that's it, but that's not real money. That's not profits. Profits are operational, that the value of a company going up is no different than the value of a house going up. If that house isn't truly worth it, that's just being bid up to that price on some speculative fervor that's not sustainable. So some boy in time, we all figure out the emperor is naked. That money starts stops flowing into the United States, and suddenly we have to start self funding our federal deficit. Well, look, we have a going back to Ben Bernanke. He put into place Operation Twist, which is a way of reducing interest payments by basically taking the federal government debt and putting it more and more into short term debt, and less and less in the long term debt. So now, exactly now, any kind of increase in interest rates such as might be caused by a big extraction of capital from this country.

Bruce Norris: 29:37

Right.

Christopher Thornberg: 29:38

Will necessarily cause a big increase in the federal interest rate burden, a one percentage point increase in the carrying cost of federal debt will cause the federal deficit to go up by $400 billion.

Bruce Norris: 29:50

Right.

Christopher Thornberg: 29:51

So we go from two to $2.4 billion of borrowing without even blanket.

Bruce Norris: 29:58

Right.

Christopher Thornberg: 29:58

And you can see how that. Feedback effect could cause it to quickly become larger and larger, and then suddenly we're faced with a consequence, which is a major turning point where we have to decide we, the right thing to do is okay, this is not sustainable. We have to raise taxes and cut spending. Now, do you think there's the political will in this nation right now to raise taxes and gut spending. Do you think Americans despite the fact that consumption at every level of our society, every level of our economy, consumption is at an high level, record high level. Never have Americans building it up, and never have they been so miserable about it as right now, there is no political space in this world for Americans to do what they need to do, which is, guess what? You got to tighten your belt a little bit. You got to pay a little bit more in taxes. You're getting a little best in benefits, and you will survive. But that's not the world we live in. Every time you pick up a paper, all you hear is how people are barely surviving. Are you kidding me? Come on, Bruce, how old are you?

Bruce Norris: 31:04

73.

Christopher Thornberg: 31:05

There you go. Scope back 50 years ago. Do you think anybody had the quality of life that people had today, binge watching TV shows, planning about working 40 hours a week, having just constant entertainment and information being delivered to them on a second by second basis. Everybody's living a dream, traveling every place, and everybody's miserable. They all think that somehow or other, 50 years ago, things were better, which is so nonsensical. But in that political atmosphere, you can't raise taxes, you can't get spending, ergo, suddenly we're going into a major debt problem. What do you do? And you could answer is, as you go to the Federal Reserve, you go, 'Hey, man, a little quantitative easing. Please help us work through the mess'. Well, quantitative easing is no different than monetizing the debt. It's no different than simply turning on the printing press to cover the spending, and we know where that goes. It's called inflation. So to me, everything's going to be great until we hit this fiscal crisis, and the politics suggests we go into an inflation mode, and then things are gonna get really, really interesting.

Joey Romero: 32:23

That's gonna do it for this week's episode. Be sure to tune in next week for part two of our interview with Chris Thornberg of Beacon Economics, and be sure to get your ticket to Beyond Uncharted what's next has never happened. Bruce Norris's newest market timely report to be released on February 7 in Ontario, California, 20 years after the California Crash, Bruce Norris is set to deliver another can't miss event. For tickets, visit www.thenorris group.com and check out our events page. Hope to see there.

Narrator: 32:53

For more information on hard money loans, trust deed investing, and upcoming events with The Norris group. Check out thenorrisgroup.com. For more information on passive investing through the DBL Capital Real Estate Investment Fund, please visit dblapital.com.

Joey Romero: 33:12

The Norris Group originates and services loans in California and Florida under California DRE license 01219911. Florida mortgage lender license 1577 and NMLS license 1623669. For more information on hard money lending go to thenorrisgroup.com and click the hard money tab.