#135 - Michael Green - The Benchmark That Broke America
The Peter McCormack Show
Peter McCormack
4.7 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 11 December 2025
⏱️ 165 minutes
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Summary
Mike Green is a macro strategist known for his work on market structure, benchmark distortions, passive flows and systemic fragility.
A single benchmark shaped American markets and policy for decades and economist Mike Green believes it distorted risk, inflated asset prices, weakened the middle class and misled policymakers about the true state of the economy. In this conversation, he breaks down how a flawed model became accepted as truth, how it quietly rewired incentives, and why he thinks the consequences are now impossible to ignore.
In this episode we discuss: – What the "broken benchmark" actually is – How flawed assumptions shaped U.S. economic policy – Why markets mispriced risk for decades – The rise of passive flows and distorted price signals – How asset inflation hurt the middle class – Why housing affordability collapsed – Why policymakers didn't correct the model – The structural consequences for future generations – Whether America can fix the system without a crisis – How the UK is importing the same benchmark problems
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TIMESTAMPS: 00:00:00 – How a Benchmark Became a National Problem 00:16:24 – The Rise of Passive Flows & Market Distortion 00:32:18 – Why America Misprices Risk 00:48:05 – Asset Inflation & the Middle-Class Squeeze 01:04:22 – Housing, Debt & Structural Fragility 01:19:57 – Why Policymakers Didn't Fix the Benchmark 01:36:44 – Elites, Incentives & the Illusion of Prosperity 01:53:30 – The UK's Imported Benchmark Problem 02:10:42 – What a Saner Benchmark Would Look Like 02:27:15 – Future Scenarios & Final Thoughts
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CONTACT PETE › Website – http://petermccormack.com › Feedback – https://www.petermccormack.com/contact › Email – me@petermccormack.com › Instagram – /mccormack555 › X/Twitter – https://x.com/petermccormack/
CONNECT WITH MIKE GREEN › Website – https://www.simplify.us › Twitter – https://x.com/profplum99 › Substack – https://substack.com/@michaelwgreen
SPONSORS › IREN - https://www.iren.com/ › Ledger - https://www.ledger.com/ › Gemini - https://gemini.com/
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FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR › https://www.curttaylor.co.uk/ › https://x.com/curttayloruk/
EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK › https://x.com/ConorM04
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Look, people get depressed when they don't understand what's going on, when they're not in control of their own circumstances. |
| 0:07.0 | We want opportunity. |
| 0:09.0 | Pursuit of happiness. |
| 0:10.0 | Pursuit of happiness. |
| 0:11.0 | I don't want happiness. I want the pursuit of happiness, right? |
| 0:15.0 | Because that pursuit, that life journey towards your fulfillment actually gives you meaning. |
| 0:20.0 | It gives you pride. |
| 0:21.6 | There's this perpetual state of natalism, this, you know, childhood that is extending |
| 0:26.6 | further and further children are living at home. |
| 0:29.6 | Why? Because they can't afford it. So what are their expected behavior? |
| 0:32.6 | Should they behave as adults or should they expect their parents to continue to do their laundry for them? |
| 0:36.6 | They're basically saying, well, why don't you act like an adult? |
| 0:40.3 | Why don't you recognize there's hard choices that you have to make? |
| 0:43.9 | Right? And meanwhile, they're saying, hey, I'd love to be an adult. |
| 0:47.0 | I can't afford to be an adult. |
| 0:49.2 | And so I'm stuck in this extended adolescence where I'm living with my parents |
| 0:53.0 | who may view me bringing home a girl |
| 0:55.8 | or who may view me going out at night in a manner that makes me look like I'm still 17 |
| 1:01.4 | and that angers me and frustrates me and there's resentment that builds up over all of those |
| 1:05.4 | components, et cetera. But the core resentment is they want to act like an adult and they can't. |
| 1:13.2 | This show is brought to you by my lead sponsor, Iron, the AI cloud for the next big thing. |
| 1:18.9 | Iron builds and operates next generation data centers and delivers cutting edge GPU infrastructure, |
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