A Major COVID-Level SHOCK *just* Started

Folks, we have just been warned that we

are not prepared for what is about to

happen in the economy. This could be

worse than the global great reset that

everybody's been talking about for

years. It might finally be upon us. In

this video, I'm going to go through all

of the news of the last 36 hours here.

And there is a lot not only having to do

with Powell, but Trump, Iran, China

approval ratings, disapproval ratings,

trade. There's a lot. Let's get started.

Today, by the way, is April 17th. The

stock market will be closed tomorrow in

honor of Good Friday, which means we

have a 3-day weekend. Uh, in honor of

this 3-day weekend, and to help with

some logistics, we've also very briefly

extended the sale on the Meet Kevin

membership. that price will be going up

very soon. So, by the time a new video

is out, the price will have been changed

higher. So, go to meet Kevin.com to see

that. You can learn more about that. We

don't need to pitch this all over again.

Let's just get into the video. So, first

things first, we need to understand that

when Donald Trump tells us we are making

$2 billion per day on tariffs, it's just

as good as Donald Trump telling us that

we can bend time and space, which is an

actual quote from the Trump

administration. And they're not even

wearing a Don't Sue me

brochure. No, we can't bend time and

space and we're not making $2 billion

per day. Best case scenario, we have

made maybe $250 million per day in

uninterrupted revenues per the customs

officials who actually collect tariff

revenue. This means that so far tariffs

are collecting maybe 12% of what Donald

Trump is suggesting we are actually

collecting. Now, why is this a problem?

It's a problem because Donald Trump

feels that we're making a lot of money

while we're waiting for China to call

us. But the reality is different. China

doesn't need to call us because over the

last four to six years they've been

increasing their trade surplus with

their trading partners that they now

call their Asian

family to minimize the impact that a

trade war with the United States at some

point in the future now happening would

have on China. In other words, China

actually prepared for this war

potentially happening at some point,

whereas guess what? We did not. As

usual, and once again, America sticks

its nose into a problem or creates a

problem. We don't actually have a backup

plan ready. This is not good, especially

when our president is misleading himself

on how much money we're actually making

from tariff revenue. And this is where

we're starting to see damage. Yes,

actual damage and actual warnings. The

World Trade Organization sees exports

down 12.6% across USMCA regions along

with a 7% decline in global gross

domestic product over the long run due

to trade fragmentation. This potential

that we may just not trade with China

anymore, which is crazy because so much

of what's in our lives is made in China.

From walkietalkie baby monitors to

go-karts to tires to power cables to

batteries to car parts to plane parts.

You name it. Our laptops, our iPads, our

phones. So much of our economy, our

service-based economy is dependent on

the manufacturing that we have in China.

And this is why a lot of folks are now

really concerned about this potential

decoupling. leading Bloomberg's

editorial board to tell us something

that I haven't expected. But let's just

say they just issued their warning. And

like I like to say with the

Warlave, you were not prepared for it.

Take a look at this very closely. And I

think it's important to watch closely.

Ideally, quote, financial companies

should have ample resources to absorb

losses and prevent contagion. They

don't. In one of the world's most

important markets, US treasuries, hedge

funds are so leveraged that spikes in

volatility can quickly send them to

bankruptcy. Systemically important banks

lack the equity capital needed to

survive worstc case scenarios on their

own. In other words, they all end up

relying on the government. And the

government is in a place where we are

cutting one in five employees in the

regulatory environment that might be

able to give us an early warning about

cracks in our actual financial system.

But no, we're cutting those jobs

probably when we need them the most.

Now, look, don't get me wrong. I think

you, me, and the fence post, we're we're

all a fan of saving money at the

government and shrinking the size of

government. But the problem is we're

potentially going into a shock that we

are not prepared for to the point where

now the editorial board of Bloomberg is

saying we are walking into a

manmade

disaster and we are not ready for it.

Our banks aren't ready for

it. Our Fed isn't ready for it. Our

hedge funds aren't ready for it. Our

businesses aren't ready for it. Our

debtor companies aren't ready for it. In

other words, the seeds are here for a

real financial crisis and the editorial

board is telling you to buckle up and

get ready. And that is a warning you

very, very rarely hear from Bloomberg.

Maybe it has to do not only with the

World Trade Organization information

that we got on longerrun GDP, but the

fact that we just saw 80 sailings

cancelled out of China in the span of

just one week. Now, you might think,

"Ah, 80 sailings, what? 80 80 cargo

deliveries? Who cares?" But mind you,

every single cargo ship could contain

8,000 to 10,000

containers. 80 sailings. That works out

to

640,000 to 800,000 containers that do

not show up in America.

Who unloads those 640 to 800,000

containers? Robots? No. Humans,

truckers, trains,

warehouses, storage yards, labor,

logistics, all of these businesses get

the downstream effects of a lack of

trade. And it's really bad. And it's

probably why this sharp deterioration

we're seeing in trade is leading to such

excessive warnings now from the

editorial board of Bloomberg issuing a

warning that we are not prepared to

absorb the losses that are about to

happen. This is bad. like things are

getting so weird with how these uh you

know companies are putting out warnings

that I'm starting to wonder, man, this

is the time for me to start turning

bullish because everybody's starting to

get pretty bearish out there. But no, I

have a rule. I wait for JPA to pivot,

which don't even get me started on what

happened with JPOW yesterday. We'll talk

about that in just a moment. It's worth

noting the editorial board of the Fed

also thinks that or of Bloomberg also

thinks that the Fed should start bailing

out hedge funds because there's so

little liquidity in our treasuries

market. No wonder our treasuries are

selling

off. But we also have a lack of

liquidity in the stock market, which

isn't great and doesn't bode well for

potential future returns for the rest of

the year. But what's happening so far is

while the stock market has stabilized,

Donald Trump's approval ratings, at

least compared to his first term, are

not. According to his first term, we as

usual, right after inauguration, you get

a little bit of enthusiastic bump. We

got a little bit of that over here as

well, not as much. But we are doing

significantly worse on Trump 2.0

compared to Trump 1.0. likely because a

lot of the voters who voted for Trump

2.0 were a different cohort. Over 70% of

voters who voted for Trump 1.0 were

elderly and

white. The Trump 2.0 voter, you only had

about 40% of voters that were elderly

and only about half to about 60% of

voters that were white. In other words,

you had a much more diverse and younger

voter for Trump. And a lot of experts

think those are the people that might be

flip-flopping against Trump because

they're getting pissed with what's going

on. Now, is that to say that, oh, now

all of a sudden all of those people have

Trump derangement syndrome? No. I think

people are just responding to the fact

that we are now in a place where

continuing claims are rising yet again.

1885 versus the 1870 expected this

morning. Empire Fed manufacturing wasn't

great yesterday, although employment

still somewhat stable. Christine Lagod

was yapping this morning about how you

have to basically be crazy not to see

some of the damage that's being caused

in markets or environments right now,

which is scary because then when you

jump over to the Philadelphia Fed read,

what do you get? You get some of the

worst future and current activity that

we have seen since the pandemic. These

aren't good reads. Now, obviously, there

has to be some bit of a bright spot,

right? And yeah, there is. For example,

rich people are still spending money on

their American Express

cards. Artificial intelligence spend is

still booming per TSMC, at least with

the rich companies that are able to

afford the chips, which is good. So far,

still not seeing that wall hitting AI

spending yet. No changes yet, even

because of tariffs. So, this is good

news from TSMC. But what did we get from

the Federal Reserve yesterday? Well, my

opinion, I mean, we had an emergency

course member meet Kevin membership live

stream on on exactly this where

afterwards I'm like we all went into

this knowing what Powell was going to

say. Like it was no surprise. So why did

the market sell off? Well, the markets

probably sold off because you actually

have people who are buying the dip

misunderstanding that Jerome Powell

refuses to repeat the mistakes of the

1970s.

You have to look at the Federal Reserve

in very simple

terms. If we are on a scale of one to 10

when it comes to inflation and

jobs, five and five is balanced. When

inflation is at a five and jobs sits at

a five, the Fed is happy. Jobs right now

are balanced at a five. But inflation's

high at a seven. So what's the Fed going

to do? They're going to fight inflation.

Well, what if infl, you know, the jobs

market goes down to like a four and a

half and inflation's still at seven?

Well, Jerome Powell yesterday told us

they're going to focus on inflation and

they need to make sure that inflation

does not become entrenched. So, they

will continue to fight inflation,

inflation, inflation. you would actually

have to see the jobs market get so much

worse and inflation get a little bit

better before the Federal Reserve

actually flips and starts bailing out

markets. In other words, the Fed put is

probably a lot further out than people

were estimating. Now, people who have

been following me and are part of the

Meet Kevin membership, you're not

surprised by this because we know the

Federal Reserve is not going to U-turn

anytime soon. In fact, they're probably

because of this tariff drama going to

U-turn too late. Now, to some extent,

you could argue that's their

fault. But on the flip side, it's

entirely possible that these trade

destroying tariffs are not transitory.

2018 tariffs, let's be real, they were

transitory. Okay? You got a bump in

prices. Washing machines and dryers went

up. We had a onetime price increase.

That was transitory inflation. The

problem is with the tariffs that we now

have on China, we are way beyond

transitory tariffs where we actually sit

or at trade destroying levels of

tariffs, cancelling 80

sailings in a week overweek report is

horrible. Trade is down 50% in a

week-overweek report. CNBC just had this

on their front page.

This is actually trade destroying. And

trade destroying is like a supply chain

shock we saw during COVID where you

actually get real inflation because you

have to rebuild supply chains.

Rebuilding supply chains is very hard.

You can't do it overnight. We have an

economy that's built on people taking

service jobs and spending money on cheap

goods and services.

We don't have an economy that has the

infrastructure for all of us to go work

in factories. We don't have the skills.

We don't have the infrastructure for it.

We don't have the factories for it. We

don't have corporations that have the

willingness to pay our

wages. And so this is why people say

like, "Oh, but Kevin, you know, you're

always usually Mr. Buy the Dip. Why are

you not buying the dip?" Well, because I

like to be a contrarian. That's what we

do with House Hack as well. It's one of

the reasons why I think we have just

raised over $4.5 million in less than

three weeks because people look and go,

"Okay, I want to diversify to a

contrarian bet. That's why I like

listening to Kevin. He's a contrarian

and he's going to invest in real estate

like a contrarian." When everybody's

investing in the bubble markets, he's

investing where they're not. And then he

can swoop into the bubble markets when

everybody's panicking at the bottom.

It's exactly what we're doing with House

Hack. Okay.

But where do we sit with levels of

capitulation for retail by the dipping?

Well, take a look at this right here.

We've got a chart for you. Look at this.

This is from Bank of America. It's the

global equity risk love sheet.

Basically, what you want to do is I drew

this red line here. You want to look at

this red line. When the blue line hits

the red line, you've hit capitulation.

Okay? Is the most simple way to

understand this chart. You could see you

hit capitulation in ' 08 09 the end of

2011 almost here in

201516 you hit capitulation in 2020 and

then you almost hit capitulation again

in 2022 towards the end of the year.

Okay, where do we sit right now? Well,

right now we sit at like 2019 2018

levels. In other words, just a regular

dip. Like this is a run-of-the-mill dip.

This is not a level of capitulation

where people are actually panicking.

Nobody's panicking. People keep buying

shares. In fact, when you look at

Goldman Sachs reports on this, retail

continues to be a positive net inflow

into the markets. Markets don't bottom

until retail capitulates. And retail

usually capitulates right before the

Federal Reserve panics and bails

everybody out. And then you have your

true bottom formed. So, we're not at

that retail capitulation yet, which

means a contrarian says, "All right,

I'll hold my cash until retail finally

gets shaken out." Retail has not gotten

shaken out yet. Now, one of the reasons

retail probably hasn't gotten shaken out

yet is because everybody's been trained,

oh, by the dip, the stock market always

goes up. And this has been true for the

last 17 years, but we've been under a QE

regime. We are going into this potential

risk recession without QE and without a

stimulative Congress. There's no

quantitative easing. There are not even

low interest rates. We have high rates,

quantitative tightening, and a

government that wants to cut spending.

This is the opposite of a buy the dip

moment. That's my take. Okay. But I'm

using the data to analyze this and I'm

finding it well very undesirable to

invest at some of these levels. Now, of

course, Donald Trump, I have this

written down over here. Donald Trump is

now complaining about Jerome Powell,

saying the ECB, which they did cut today

for the seventh time. They brought rates

down to 2.25. And then he nicknames

Powell too late Jerome

Powell. Too late Powell of the Fed, who

was always too late and wrong. yesterday

issued a report which was another

typical complete mess. Oil prices is

down, groceries, even eggs are down and

US is getting richer on tariffs. No,

we're not getting richer on tariffs. And

congratulations, wow, supply and demand.

When you stop killing birds because of a

bird flu culling, wow, egg prices come

down again. Oh, and oil prices are down

because of tariffs. No, because the oil

market is responding as commodities are

to the very real reality that we might

be going into a pretty dang dirty

recession, which isn't

good. And that's what oil does. It goes

down going into a recession. Uh, and so

then Donald Trump says Pal's termination

can't come fast enough, which now a lot

of people are speculating, oh my gosh,

is he gonna try to take any semblance of

certainty we have in the market away by

firing Jerome Powell? Like I'm stressed

out over all this stuff because it's so

bad and and I've I you know I've been

yelling that the conditions have been

set for a recession for about 10 months

now. I turned bearish in July. Ah it's

been like nine months. I turned bearish

in July, started

hedging and now we're in a place where

Donald Trump is lighting the fire. It's

not good. Now a lot of people were

worried, oh my gosh, is Powell going to

get fired? No, I don't think he's going

to fire Powell.

Powell's term is up in a year and one

month. Okay, Trump will wait through

that. But what will happen is if there's

a recession, Donald Trump will use

Powell as a scapegoat and Musk. Elon

Musk's Doge. Oh, it was so efficient. It

was so good. We caused a recession.

Oops.

But we could have avoided a recession if

it weren't for that darn Powell who was

just too late to cut rates. Well, how

was he supposed to cut rates when you

were creating supply chain level

destruction that we saw during

COVID to our markets?

It's impossible to cut in the face of

that because you're going to entrench

inflation and then you'll risk repeating

the 1970s where you create such a

disaster that you end up having to get a

Paul Vulkar who doesn't raise rates to

5% or 5.5% but they end up raising rates

to 17 18 20% to finally break the back

of inflation. That's

worse than Powell waiting and being

late going to 18% rates. Could you

imagine that? Be insane. At the same

time, China is combating Donald Trump's

tariffs with the idea of the Asian

family. This is basically where uh

Xiinping travels. Starting on Monday, he

went to Vietnam. Now he's been in

Malaysia. He allegedly signed 45 deals

in Vietnam. Now he's signing deals in

Malaysia. He's traveling to all these

other different countries in the Asian

regions. And what he's doing is he's

saying, quote, "Together, we must stand

against hedgemenism, power politics, and

we should resolutely oppose any attempts

by external forces to interfere with our

internal affairs." He's also doing this

in Europe. Basically, all of our allies,

Xiinping is going to signing deals with

them. Now, this could all be propaganda,

but to me, it's starting to sound like

Xiinping is signing deals and we're

getting concepts of deals.

At the same time, there's talk about

China building this military city south

of Beijing. And there are aerial photos

now leaking about this massive military

compound that China is building as they

potentially prepare for war to take over

Taiwan. Because again, what does the

democratic peace theory tell us? The

more interconnected we are with trade,

the less likely we are to go to war.

Well, who just destroyed the connections

that we have to prevent war?

All right, you see where we're going?

So, in other words, the odds of war with

Taiwan have substantially increased. At

the same time, China is trying to

rapidly build its nuclear arsenal. You

know, US is number one. Then you've got

Russia, although most of their nukes

probably suck and are broken. Uh, and at

least we hope. Uh, and and China

actually doesn't have that many. You

know, maybe 300, whereas we have like

6,000. Okay. Well, they're going to ramp

that up and they'll have more than us.

So, China's a big power. It's a big

stick and it's not great because it

seems like every single day we get more

and more slams on China which just

drives more and more of a wedge between

China and us. China retaliates with more

tariffs against us. Then we sanction the

Iranian oil that China buys. Then China

comes back and says, "Okay, we're going

to limit, you know, certain critical

mineral exports or movies or, you know,

whatever, whatever." You know, we start

getting limitations on potentially

corporations that do business in China.

TBD, China's trying to be

businessfriendly and accommodate free

trade in China, which is so weird to

think that the Communist Party of China

is the one that's trying to accommodate

freer trade, but that's just the

environment that we're in right now. So,

um, you know, I think it's important,

mind you, to be very vocal about our

frustration with tariffs because from an

economic point of view, there's there's

no logic to what we're doing. We have so

much building to do first. We have to

fix our schools. We have to fix our

infrastructure. We have to have, you

know, a functional supply chain in

America. We have to have factories in

America. We have to have the energy

infrastructure in America. We don't have

any of that. and we're starting a trade

war to where all of a sudden we're not

going to be able to order power cords

anymore, you know, in in probably as

little as 30 or 60 days because we can't

get them from China anymore. So, we'll

have to get them from somewhere else,

which will also be tariff. So, prices

will go up and then yes, we'll have

inflation and gold actually does well

during those inflationary times, but the

problem is people won't be able to pay

these higher prices and that's when you

go into a negative growth environment,

which is aka a recession. Then you have

a recession and prices actually plummet.

Usually gold plummets too at least until

uh you know the Federal Reserve U-turns

and starts turning on the money printer

again. So then people get worried about

inflation again. Uh

so Zero Hedge had this idea that you

know China only has three options.

They're like China could concede, they

could devalue their yuan or they could

unleash fisc fiscal stimulus. Okay,

which will push their debt off the

chart. Uh no it won't. So, there are a

few things you have to know here about

China. First of all, those are not the

only three options China has. A fourth

option China has is just partner with

other countries for more trade and

offset the trade that they do with the

United States, about 15% of their GDP.

They've already been growing their trade

surplus with all of the other countries

that they trade with in preparation for

this. So, they could probably outlast us

on this. We need their product more than

they need us. So, I don't think we have

the cards. I think China has the cards,

which isn't good.

China can devalue their currency. They

can unleash stimulus and they can

partner with other countries. And they

do not need to concede concede to Donald

Trump. They can do all of those

things. Now, the problem with all of

this is that people think, "Oh, but then

their debt to GDP is going to go up."

Okay. Well, what's the US debt to GDP

compared to China's? Well, US debt to

GDP is

123%. UK is 101%. Italy is 134%. Japan

is 249%.

China 84. In other words, it has a lot

of room. It has a lot of room to expand

their debt to GDP. Now, I'm not saying

that they should, but they certainly can

because, you know, let's take uh Chinese

GDP and let's multiply it by about 84%.

That would give them about $2.5 trillion

of space to get to just 100%. And they

still have 23% of a lower debt to GDP

ratio than we do. So, China is actually

in, oddly enough, in a better position

to stimulate than we are, and they

already are. Meanwhile, their economy is

also growing. Now, I don't trust all of

the Chinese numbers. I, you know, I

don't I don't know how much they're

really

growing. I'm skeptical of it, but I

definitely don't think going to war with

China in a trade war when we're not

prepared to take over this sort of

manufacturing is a great idea. I think

it's a terrible idea.

And you know, I actually think that one

of the reasons there was sort of this

rise of

like weird acceptances of bizarre social

wokeisms like this whole like pronoun

thing or whatever. I think one of the

reasons we saw this uh was driven

by a a lack of

people fighting

uh those issues or those ideas. sort of

the

passiveness and I think it's really

important that we fight these bad

tariffs because recessions are bad for

everyone.

So I don't think anybody should be

praying for a recession. I think

fortunately myself and house hack we're

in great positions uh to where it

doesn't matter recession or not but I

think about the millions of people that

are going to be suffering in a recession

and it makes me really concerned and so

this is why I think like why why would

you buy equities right now like the last

thing I like I want to make the most

contrarian bet I possibly can hence why

we're building the cash horde at house

hack and I think why so many people are

investing uh in it and this is why so

many people are joining the meet Kevin

membership that are like all right let's

get the perspective that we really need

to hear let's actually do the

fundamental research and understand

what's going on mind you it's not like

this is just me you've got to look at

companies not only companies like Google

that are quietly laying off workers but

you've got to look at the research

institutions like TS Lombard who are

telling us that we are not pricing in a

recession the problem with underpricing

a recession is that It means we have a

lot more room to fall when and if the

stock market goes poopy dupies. See, we

think it will be short-lived and

recommend selling into rallies and

staying away from buying the dip. In

other words, this recovery that we've

seen in the stock market, they think

will be short-lived and they recommend

selling into rallies and staying away

from buying the dip. And that's because

the market is not accurately pricing the

perspective hit to growth emanating from

Trump's policies. US consensus growth

forecast for this year are too rich at

1.8% on a fullear basis, which is

inconsistent with a downturn taking

shape. Weak jolts hiring, softer

corporate profit margins, more

aggressive tariffs, all collectively

factors that could be powerful enough to

push the US economy into a recession,

especially as rapid cooling of real

personal income growth leaves little

room for error, all while equity

allocations are at all-time highs. And

this doesn't even factor in the effects

of investment spending and hiring

intentions emanating from the pervasive

uncertainty that is stalking US

firms in freaking

English. A lot of things are getting a

little poopy dupy and institutions are

finally waking up to it. I was early as

usual. I come early on these things.

Sorry, just adjust for that. But I will

always give you my honest opinion, even

if it's not the most popular thing to

say at the time. I know there are going

to be a lot of people that are like,

"Oh, Kevin, it just sounds like you

caught TDS." No, I I I I didn't catch

Trump derangement syndrome. I have

always had tariff derangement syndrome

because it is full stupidity what we are

doing. I'm all for national security in

America, better education in America.

I'm all for government

efficiency. Nobody is anti- those

things, but what we're doing right now,

destroying trade, destroying

it. We are not prepared for this

recession. Why not advertise these

things that you told us here? I feel

like nobody else knows about this. We'll

we'll try a little advertising and see

how it goes. Congratulations, man. You

have done so much. People love you.

People look up to you. Kevin Pra there,

financial analyst and YouTuber. Meet

Kevin. Always great to get your take.