One question a week, argued from both sides, with no scoreboard.
Brent Johnson of Santiago Capital and John Butler, author of The Golden Revolution Revisited, agree on more than you would expect and still reach different conclusions. Brent reads the world through the dollar pulling in global stress and holding its place at the top. John reads it through gold moving back toward the centre as the dollar order frays. Neither is trying to win.
Each week they take one serious question (markets, geopolitics, the arguments that move capital) and put it under real pressure for thirty to sixty minutes. One subject taken seriously rather than five skimmed.
Every episode closes on The Takeaway. A day or two after the argument, each of them records alone and blind, five to ten minutes, with his own recommended course of action. Not a joint conclusion, not a split-the-difference compromise. You get to watch where an honest argument actually leads two people who heard exactly the same thing.
No running tally of who was right. Markets hand everybody a hot streak, usually just before the luck turns. You are here to think alongside two people who end up in different places.
Produced by Gene Morris.
Brent Johnson runs Santiago Capital and spent his career on the US side of the dollar. He is best known for the Dollar Milkshake Theory, his argument that in a crisis the dollar pulls in global liquidity and strengthens rather than collapses. On the show he makes the case that power and positioning now matter more than the economic laws everyone was taught. Based in Puerto Rico.
John Butler is the author of The Golden Revolution Revisited and a former managing director at Lehman Brothers and Deutsche Bank. He reads markets through the Austrian school: what cannot go on forever will not, and the chronic US deficits that fund the world are living on borrowed time. That thinking keeps him bullish on gold. Based in London.
Gene Morris produces TransAtlantic TakeAway. He built the pipeline the show runs on and keeps it shipping every week.