July 9, 2025 • 13 mins
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WATCH and SUBSCRIBE on:
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Is America still the land of opportunity—or has a zero-sum mindset robbed the next generation of hope? In this powerful deep-dive, the host explores the concept of zero-sum pessimism—the flawed belief that wealth must be divided like a fixed pizza rather than grown like a dynamic economy. From the 2008 crash and Occupy Wall Street to today’s Gen Z frustration, he lays out how bailouts, regulatory capture, and endless government intervention have eroded true capitalism.
Why are young Americans turning to socialism? Why does it feel like upward mobility is vanishing? And what must change to truly make America great again? This is part one of an ongoing series tackling the real forces behind our economic stagnation—and the path back to prosperity. www.watchdogonwallstreet.com
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/watchdog-on-wall-street-with-chris-markowski/id570687608
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PtgPvJvqc2gkpGIkNMR5i
WATCH and SUBSCRIBE on:
https://www.youtube.com/@WatchdogOnWallstreet/featured
Is America still the land of opportunity—or has a zero-sum mindset robbed the next generation of hope? In this powerful deep-dive, the host explores the concept of zero-sum pessimism—the flawed belief that wealth must be divided like a fixed pizza rather than grown like a dynamic economy. From the 2008 crash and Occupy Wall Street to today’s Gen Z frustration, he lays out how bailouts, regulatory capture, and endless government intervention have eroded true capitalism.
Why are young Americans turning to socialism? Why does it feel like upward mobility is vanishing? And what must change to truly make America great again? This is part one of an ongoing series tackling the real forces behind our economic stagnation—and the path back to prosperity. www.watchdogonwallstreet.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it will have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Zero sum pessimism, What does it mean? Why is it important?
If you hear it's like an economic idea and how
people look at the economy as a whole. Some people say, Okay,
we've got an economy, and what will compare it to
a pizza? Care to a pizza, and we got to
(00:38):
divvy up the pizza amongst all of the people that
reside in said country. Part of the economy you talk about,
you know, every guy, but he's got to have equality
here a myriad of different things. However, that's not how
it's supposed to work in a capitalist system. You can't
compare it to a pizza. Because the economy can grow,
(01:01):
the pizza can grow, the economy gets larger. When that
doesn't happen. When that doesn't happen, people get rattled. People
get rattled, they get distraught, they get angry. We've had
(01:24):
several events. Well think about right now, you almost almost
twenty years ago, you're talking the Great Recession. I started
signaling warning signs twenty years ago about the housing market. Okay, yeah,
two thousand and five, I was warning people about, Wow,
something's not right here, something's amiss here. But anyway, neither
(01:45):
here nor there. Right after, right after the whole financial
crisis and the bailouts were put into play, there was
a movement in downtown New York. And I've mentioned this before.
I regret with one of those career things where I
really regret I didn't go down there and broadcast from it.
(02:09):
It was Occupy Wall Street, and it was young people
just being are you kid me? You know, you're spending
all of this money, You're bailing out all of these banks.
They're going to get away with it. Nobody's going to
go to jail. I mean, there was a lot of
reasons that for kids to be angry at that point
in time. And my fear was is that, well, boy,
(02:32):
the socialists are going to get a hold of this
and they're going to, you know, start pulling people over
to their side. And they did. They did fast forward.
You know, we can fast forward past the you know,
we had the Obama years and Obamacare and we had
really really stagnant growth, really stagnant growth post Great Recession,
(02:58):
when usually usually we come back firing on all cylinders. Again,
what were the kids they voted for Obama? They want
what hope and change, That's what they wanted. They wanted hope,
they wanted change. Again, you could take a look at
the economy, the growth that we had over that period
(03:19):
of time, the difficulties, uh, you know for the millennials
that they got whacked in that in that period of time,
and you get a lot of people made fun of
them and the whining and complaining. And now you know,
we're at the gen zs that are in entering the
workforce and graduating from college and they're taking a look
at a world, taking a look at a world where
(03:43):
they don't feel like they're able to get ahead. The
promise of you know, America, promise of America where you're
going to if you work hard, you're going to do
the right things, you play by the rules, guess what
you're going you're gonna do better than your parents more
often than not. And that's hit a wall here in
(04:10):
this country. It really has. It's one of the reasons
why one of the reasons why Bernie Sanders would have
won the denomination unless you guy didn't get you know,
knee capped back in twenty sixteen by the Hilary people,
and the reason why Donald Trump won. They play on
(04:32):
this quite frankly basically, you know, offering up a vision
of hope. You know that maga make America great again.
Do I think that Donald Trump is is trying? Yeah?
(04:54):
I mean I don't think he you know, the policies,
the tariffs and some of the things that he put
forward are are going to be very helpful. But do
I think that he wants to make America great? Yes?
I do, Yes, I do. I think he's kind of
going about it all wrong. Right now. This is a
(05:15):
this is a reality. I played with some numbers. A Again,
you think about January twenty twenty, one hundred thousand dollars
salary in January twenty twenty has the same buying power
as one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars today in
(05:36):
five years. In five years, you lost in essence a
quarter of your buying power. I talked about that the
price of homes, the medium price of homes. And again,
(05:56):
if you think that lowering interest rates is going to
make it better. It's not. It's not. In order in
order to make America great again, as you have to
bring the cost of living down. The cost of living
(06:18):
is not going to come down with terraffs. It's not.
It's not going to come down with the declining US dollar.
I'll give you an example. It was a Trump put
on what was the additional tariffs yesterday on copper? Another
fifty percent on copper. Do do you have any idea
(06:42):
how much copper goes into automobiles, into homes, into holmes
I actually, you know, looked it up today. It's a
little under five hundred pounds the average home copper. Well,
guess what, the price of copper just went up, meaning
(07:04):
the price of any new home being built is going
to go up the tariffs that were put into place.
You don't think. I mean, if you listen, you don't
have to take my word for it. Speak to a builder,
speak to a contractor and ask them, ask them about
their costs. Now, these are things that again that will
(07:30):
make you truly want to make Americans happy, make America affordable.
Our entire system when it comes to food and food
delivery is a mess. We pay way too much. All
(07:50):
of these things, all of these things are making life very,
very tough. And again, if you're young, if you're young
and you're played by the rules, and yeah, I've done
the right thing. And you can't see you can't see
a light at the end of the tunnel. H This
(08:12):
is why they vote for ridiculous candidates. This is why
you know, there's socialism is becoming popular. Why not? Why not?
Capitalism sucks, it's not working. But we're not even running
a capitalist system anymore. And that's that's a big part
of the problem that most people don't understand. We did
(08:34):
away with capitalism a long, long time ago. And you
know what it is, it's almost it's almost the same
effects if you get addicted to opiates. We as Americans
became averse to any sort of pain, verse to any
sort of pain. Oh, fix it, federal reserve, fix it, government,
(08:56):
bail it out, do this, do that out of economic
grow potential economic growth that we have squandered and wasted
because of ultra low interest rates, because of bailouts, because
(09:17):
of regulatory capture. It's extraordinary, it really is. We're going
to get in, like I said, it's going to be
an ongoing, ongoing series we're doing here on the program,
we're going to talk about regulatory capture. We're going to
talk about bureaucracy, not just in government, but in corporate
(09:39):
America and how those two things go hand in hand.
And we're going to talk about you know, we love
zombie movies, right, Walking Dead, great television show. I love
World War Z. That was great. I am legend zombies
are real. They're just come in the form of bad companies.
(10:03):
And again, it's a virus that spreads just like the
zombie virus does in the movie. Spreads very quickly and
it goes global. No, you don't have to bite anybody.
It's a little different than that. But again, it's eating
away at our system that builds wealth without a doubt,
(10:24):
without a doubt. And again, I know it's not politically correct.
Well you know, I'll say it the politically correct way.
We're the best house in a bad neighborhood at this
point in time outside of maybe you know, a few countries, Switzerland, Singapore,
several others. But again, you take a look at our
(10:45):
rankings as far as economic freedom is concerned, I don't know,
we're like twenty five now, that's a problem, okay, in
order to make America great again. It's not about protecting businesses. Okay.
It's not about putting up walls. It was never about that.
(11:09):
It's about getting out of the way again. That goes
to iin ran An Atlas shrugged, get out of the way.
Lower barriers of entry allow people to go out there
and build and create again. I was interviewed about this
(11:34):
today and I brought up the point. I brought up
the point. You know, over thirty years ago when my
brothers and I we started Markowski Investments, we didn't again
we had just dealt went through hell with lawsuits, with
big broken I mean, it was its as I didn't
have any money, was scrapping money together to put the
(11:55):
thing together, and all the regulatory costs are involved. I
couldn't do it today with the capital that I had
back then. And again I owe every single time I
do it, I adjust for inflation. They make it nearly
impossible for people to get in. Nearly impossible. It's one
(12:17):
of the reasons why we at Markowski Investments are expanding
and opening up more officers because we're helping young advisors
and training them. Because you know, we handle the expenses.
We allow them to work on their own, We allow
them to build their own brand and do all these
things that nobody else will allow them to do. But
(12:37):
again lowering the you know, making these barriers of entry
so high, so you can't have upstarts, you can't have competitors.
Who wins there, the big guys win they can basically
they have regulations that act as a mote. Again, again
I'm not going to get too much farther into this
because again I'm going to talk about regulatory capture and
(12:59):
how all of this stuff works. I want to make
America great again. I do. And again I've said this
as an ongoing theme that I've had here. I said,
you know, I want my kids to grow up in
a world where they can succeed beyond their wildest dreams
and fail as well, because that's a part of it.
We've got to get to the point in time where
(13:19):
people can see that light at the end of the tunnel.
Got to bring back that excitement, those animal spirits. Again,
we need to get the government out of the way.
We don't need industrial policy here in this country. We
don't need the government more involved in industry. Get them
out of the way, Allow for the ingenuity of the
(13:43):
American people, animal spirits here in this country. Allow them
to work watch dog on Wall street dot com
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it will have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Zero sum pessimism, What does it mean? Why is it important?
If you hear it's like an economic idea and how
people look at the economy as a whole. Some people say, Okay,
we've got an economy, and what will compare it to
a pizza? Care to a pizza, and we got to
(00:38):
divvy up the pizza amongst all of the people that
reside in said country. Part of the economy you talk about,
you know, every guy, but he's got to have equality
here a myriad of different things. However, that's not how
it's supposed to work in a capitalist system. You can't
compare it to a pizza. Because the economy can grow,
(01:01):
the pizza can grow, the economy gets larger. When that
doesn't happen. When that doesn't happen, people get rattled. People
get rattled, they get distraught, they get angry. We've had
(01:24):
several events. Well think about right now, you almost almost
twenty years ago, you're talking the Great Recession. I started
signaling warning signs twenty years ago about the housing market. Okay, yeah,
two thousand and five, I was warning people about, Wow,
something's not right here, something's amiss here. But anyway, neither
(01:45):
here nor there. Right after, right after the whole financial
crisis and the bailouts were put into play, there was
a movement in downtown New York. And I've mentioned this before.
I regret with one of those career things where I
really regret I didn't go down there and broadcast from it.
(02:09):
It was Occupy Wall Street, and it was young people
just being are you kid me? You know, you're spending
all of this money, You're bailing out all of these banks.
They're going to get away with it. Nobody's going to
go to jail. I mean, there was a lot of
reasons that for kids to be angry at that point
in time. And my fear was is that, well, boy,
(02:32):
the socialists are going to get a hold of this
and they're going to, you know, start pulling people over
to their side. And they did. They did fast forward.
You know, we can fast forward past the you know,
we had the Obama years and Obamacare and we had
really really stagnant growth, really stagnant growth post Great Recession,
(02:58):
when usually usually we come back firing on all cylinders. Again,
what were the kids they voted for Obama? They want
what hope and change, That's what they wanted. They wanted hope,
they wanted change. Again, you could take a look at
the economy, the growth that we had over that period
(03:19):
of time, the difficulties, uh, you know for the millennials
that they got whacked in that in that period of time,
and you get a lot of people made fun of
them and the whining and complaining. And now you know,
we're at the gen zs that are in entering the
workforce and graduating from college and they're taking a look
at a world, taking a look at a world where
(03:43):
they don't feel like they're able to get ahead. The
promise of you know, America, promise of America where you're
going to if you work hard, you're going to do
the right things, you play by the rules, guess what
you're going you're gonna do better than your parents more
often than not. And that's hit a wall here in
(04:10):
this country. It really has. It's one of the reasons
why one of the reasons why Bernie Sanders would have
won the denomination unless you guy didn't get you know,
knee capped back in twenty sixteen by the Hilary people,
and the reason why Donald Trump won. They play on
(04:32):
this quite frankly basically, you know, offering up a vision
of hope. You know that maga make America great again.
Do I think that Donald Trump is is trying? Yeah?
(04:54):
I mean I don't think he you know, the policies,
the tariffs and some of the things that he put
forward are are going to be very helpful. But do
I think that he wants to make America great? Yes?
I do, Yes, I do. I think he's kind of
going about it all wrong. Right now. This is a
(05:15):
this is a reality. I played with some numbers. A Again,
you think about January twenty twenty, one hundred thousand dollars
salary in January twenty twenty has the same buying power
as one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars today in
(05:36):
five years. In five years, you lost in essence a
quarter of your buying power. I talked about that the
price of homes, the medium price of homes. And again,
(05:56):
if you think that lowering interest rates is going to
make it better. It's not. It's not. In order in
order to make America great again, as you have to
bring the cost of living down. The cost of living
(06:18):
is not going to come down with terraffs. It's not.
It's not going to come down with the declining US dollar.
I'll give you an example. It was a Trump put
on what was the additional tariffs yesterday on copper? Another
fifty percent on copper. Do do you have any idea
(06:42):
how much copper goes into automobiles, into homes, into holmes
I actually, you know, looked it up today. It's a
little under five hundred pounds the average home copper. Well,
guess what, the price of copper just went up, meaning
(07:04):
the price of any new home being built is going
to go up the tariffs that were put into place.
You don't think. I mean, if you listen, you don't
have to take my word for it. Speak to a builder,
speak to a contractor and ask them, ask them about
their costs. Now, these are things that again that will
(07:30):
make you truly want to make Americans happy, make America affordable.
Our entire system when it comes to food and food
delivery is a mess. We pay way too much. All
(07:50):
of these things, all of these things are making life very,
very tough. And again, if you're young, if you're young
and you're played by the rules, and yeah, I've done
the right thing. And you can't see you can't see
a light at the end of the tunnel. H This
(08:12):
is why they vote for ridiculous candidates. This is why
you know, there's socialism is becoming popular. Why not? Why not?
Capitalism sucks, it's not working. But we're not even running
a capitalist system anymore. And that's that's a big part
of the problem that most people don't understand. We did
(08:34):
away with capitalism a long, long time ago. And you
know what it is, it's almost it's almost the same
effects if you get addicted to opiates. We as Americans
became averse to any sort of pain, verse to any
sort of pain. Oh, fix it, federal reserve, fix it, government,
(08:56):
bail it out, do this, do that out of economic
grow potential economic growth that we have squandered and wasted
because of ultra low interest rates, because of bailouts, because
(09:17):
of regulatory capture. It's extraordinary, it really is. We're going
to get in, like I said, it's going to be
an ongoing, ongoing series we're doing here on the program,
we're going to talk about regulatory capture. We're going to
talk about bureaucracy, not just in government, but in corporate
(09:39):
America and how those two things go hand in hand.
And we're going to talk about you know, we love
zombie movies, right, Walking Dead, great television show. I love
World War Z. That was great. I am legend zombies
are real. They're just come in the form of bad companies.
(10:03):
And again, it's a virus that spreads just like the
zombie virus does in the movie. Spreads very quickly and
it goes global. No, you don't have to bite anybody.
It's a little different than that. But again, it's eating
away at our system that builds wealth without a doubt,
(10:24):
without a doubt. And again, I know it's not politically correct.
Well you know, I'll say it the politically correct way.
We're the best house in a bad neighborhood at this
point in time outside of maybe you know, a few countries, Switzerland, Singapore,
several others. But again, you take a look at our
(10:45):
rankings as far as economic freedom is concerned, I don't know,
we're like twenty five now, that's a problem, okay, in
order to make America great again. It's not about protecting businesses. Okay.
It's not about putting up walls. It was never about that.
(11:09):
It's about getting out of the way again. That goes
to iin ran An Atlas shrugged, get out of the way.
Lower barriers of entry allow people to go out there
and build and create again. I was interviewed about this
(11:34):
today and I brought up the point. I brought up
the point. You know, over thirty years ago when my
brothers and I we started Markowski Investments, we didn't again
we had just dealt went through hell with lawsuits, with
big broken I mean, it was its as I didn't
have any money, was scrapping money together to put the
(11:55):
thing together, and all the regulatory costs are involved. I
couldn't do it today with the capital that I had
back then. And again I owe every single time I
do it, I adjust for inflation. They make it nearly
impossible for people to get in. Nearly impossible. It's one
(12:17):
of the reasons why we at Markowski Investments are expanding
and opening up more officers because we're helping young advisors
and training them. Because you know, we handle the expenses.
We allow them to work on their own, We allow
them to build their own brand and do all these
things that nobody else will allow them to do. But
(12:37):
again lowering the you know, making these barriers of entry
so high, so you can't have upstarts, you can't have competitors.
Who wins there, the big guys win they can basically
they have regulations that act as a mote. Again, again
I'm not going to get too much farther into this
because again I'm going to talk about regulatory capture and
(12:59):
how all of this stuff works. I want to make
America great again. I do. And again I've said this
as an ongoing theme that I've had here. I said,
you know, I want my kids to grow up in
a world where they can succeed beyond their wildest dreams
and fail as well, because that's a part of it.
We've got to get to the point in time where
(13:19):
people can see that light at the end of the tunnel.
Got to bring back that excitement, those animal spirits. Again,
we need to get the government out of the way.
We don't need industrial policy here in this country. We
don't need the government more involved in industry. Get them
out of the way, Allow for the ingenuity of the
(13:43):
American people, animal spirits here in this country. Allow them
to work watch dog on Wall street dot com
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