The US Dollar Isn’t Going Anywhere (Here’s Why)

Dave:Hello, my friends, and welcome to On The Market. I’m your host, Dave Meyer, and today it’s just me. We’re going to be doing an episode where I deep dive into one of the most requested topics we’ve ever had, and I’ve actually been surprised about how many people have reached out to me about this topic because it is not actually directly related to real estate, but it is a huge economic question that, of course, impacts investors and real estate indirectly, so I do think it is a really worthwhile and pretty fascinating topic to talk about. What we’re getting into today is all about the United States dollar and its position as the dominant reserve currency in the world. The reason so many people seem to be asking about this of late is that there has been a lot of news about this topic recently, that has prompted the question.Just a couple of weeks ago, France and China completed their first natural gas transaction using Chinese currency instead of US currency, which is a really big deal for reasons we’re going to get into. We’ve heard the, quote, unquote, “BRICS nations,” which are Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. They’ve announced that they’re going to start exploring a new reserve currency to challenge the US dollar. Saudi Arabia’s finance minister has said that they’re willing to trade oil in non-dollar denominations, so there is a lot going on with regard to the United States dollar’s position as the global currency. Of course, this is an important question, and it’s really interesting because, honestly, the US dollar has been the dominant world currency for every one of our lives since the mid 1940s, and we’ll get into that story in a little bit. But basically, none of the people, myself included, anyone listening to this really knows or understands a world where the United States dollar is not the dominant currency.Basically, none of us have lived through that. Maybe we have a few listeners who are in their 80s, which would be great. Hopefully that’s true, but something tells me that’s a limited number. But most of us basically take for granted that the US dollar is the dominant reserve of currency, but maybe, given all of the news that we’re hearing, we shouldn’t. That’s what we’re going to talk about today. We’re going to get into how the US dollar became the dominant world currency. We’re going to talk about removing the US dollar from the gold standard back in the 1970s. Why being the dominant reserve currency in the world even matters in the first place. We’ll talk about why the USD dominance is under threat right now. Could the US dollar realistically lose dominance, and when might that happen? If that actually happens, what might happen in the United States if the USD is no longer the world reserve?There is a lot to this, and I’m super excited to get into it. But we have two housekeeping items I just need to get to quick. First, a big thank you to Pooja Jindal. Currency is not my area of expertise. I do have a pretty good understanding of economics, but currency, not my real focus, so I spent, actually, a few weeks expanding my knowledge about this topic before recording. Pooja, who is an On The Market researcher, did an incredible job helping me create this episode. She has a master’s degree in economics. She’s also in real estate in Southern California and is just generally amazing, so a big thank you to her.Secondly, the whole reason this episode exists is because listeners, just like you, requested it. I got a ton of people reaching out to me on Instagram for this episode. If you have other thoughts for shows that you want to hear researched and discussed, hit me up. I am on Instagram @thedatadeli, that’s T-H-E D-A-T-A D-E-L-I, and I am pretty responsive there, so if you have ideas for the show, let me know. But let me just tell you a couple of guidelines. When we’re making these shows, we want to make them broadly appealing. We are not going to go do some deep dive into a really specific market. I’m sure you’re interested in what’s going on specifically in your area, but this show is meant to help investors from coast to coast, so make it really broad.Secondly, we also want broad questions, not necessarily opinion. This episode got made because people reached out and asked. They said, “Is it possible the USD loses world dominance, and what could happen?” They didn’t say the USD is losing world dominance. That’s an opinion. Our goal on the show is to explore these broad questions and try to be as objective as we can about them. Those are my two hints. If you want to get something you’re interested in made into a show, make it broad, make it a good question, and we’ll take seriously any requests that you have.All right, so we’re going to get into the whole situation with the US dollar, but first we’re going to take a quick break.

Speaker 2:(singing.)

Dave:To understand what is going on with the US dollar today, we need to look a little bit backwards and establish a little bit of context, understand a little bit of history, we’ll make our conversation about what’s going on right now a whole lot easier. The first question we need to answer is, “What the heck in the first place is a reserve currency?” Because, as I’ve said, we’re talking about the US dollar being the, quote, unquote, “dominant currency.” What we’re really talking about when I say being dominant, I’m talking about being it the dominant reserve currency. Reserve currencies are currencies that are not currently in circulation. It’s not like these are being spent out at a store. It’s not cash held in your wallet or in a business’s bank account. It is currency that is held in a country’s central bank. Most major economies, most major countries in the world have a central bank. In the United States, we call ours the Federal Reserve, which is a very commonly discussed topic here on On The Market, but most major economies have a central bank.There’s one in Europe. There’s one in China and Japan. All over the world, these countries have central banks, and they control monetary policy. The specific reason that central banks across the whole world hold currencies in reserve is basically to facilitate international commerce and trade. It’s a complicated topic, but basically, if two countries who are trading with one another are using the same currency, it makes it a lot easier for them to trade with one another. There are also secondary benefits for holding foreign currency reserves. Basically, different governments can stabilize their own currency and their exchange rate when needed. But basically, most sophisticated economies hold currency reserves, and every country decides for themselves which kinds of currency they want to hold and reserve. But across the entire world, most central banks are very heavy in US currency.As of 2022, which is the last data I could find for this, but I think it’s probably still pretty similar, the USD, and just as a side note, I’m going to be calling the US dollar, the United States currency, USD, throughout this episode. I’m basically just talking about our currency as Americans. As of 2022, the USD was about 59% of total reserves throughout the world. That sounds like a lot, and it is a lot because the next highest is just a third of that. The euro, which is the second most common reserve currency, only holds 20% of reserves across the world. US is almost 60%, Euro is at 20%, so those two combined, the United States dollar and the euro, are 80% of the reserve currency in the entire world. Third, we have Japan, which drops all the way down to 5%. Then we have Great Britain, and we also have the Chinese renminbi, which is only about 3%. It’s fifth place, but it’s only about 3%. We’re going to talk about China in a little bit.What you need to know right now is that the US is truly, truly dominant in terms of reserve currencies. Just for context here, 60% is huge because the US has about 4% of the world’s population, really punching above its weight class there. The US economy is by far the biggest in the world, still. It makes up about 20 to 25% of the world’s GDP, but yet it makes up 60% of the world’s reserve currency. The USD is huge in terms of reserves even compared to the United States major role in the entire global economy, and being the major reserve for the world does have both benefits and a few drawbacks. The major benefit is that it reduces transaction costs. Basically, when you’re trading with another country, if the reserve currency you’re using is your own currency, like it is for the vast majority of deals the United States does, it reduces the transaction costs, which is obviously beneficial.Second, it lowers borrowing rates for the United States government. This is just basically supply and demand because so many countries want United States currency, which are often held in the form of US bonds. The US can issue bonds and treasury bills at a lower interest rate. So many people want it. That’s really high demand. That means that they can offer it at a lower price, which means the US tends to be able to borrow at very low interest rates.The third benefit, which we’ll talk about a bunch, is that it actually provides some leverage over other countries. If you control the reserve currency in the world, it allows you to exert power in some interesting ways over other countries, which is something we’re going to talk about a lot and is one of the major reasons why dollar dominance is being called into question right now.There are a few drawbacks. Generally speaking, most economists believes the benefits of being the world’s reserve currency outweigh the drawbacks. But I do want to just mention that there are some drawbacks, and basically, it can lead to loose spending due to cheap borrowing. Like I said, the US government can borrow at a very low rate and run a deficit relatively easily compared to other governments. I’m not saying that’s necessarily a good thing. I’m just saying, compared to other governments, they can run a deficit relatively easily, and that can lead to the negative impacts of debt. Basically, you can have asset bubbles and large government debt, both of which we’ve seen in the United States in the 50… In the 80 years, excuse me, that the USD has been the dominant world currency.That is just a primer on reserve currencies and what they are. We’re going to get back to reserve currencies in a little bit and what is happening to the US role as a reserve currency. But first, it is helpful to understand how the United States became the dominant player in terms of reserve currencies, because this is going to help us later understand if and how the emergence of alternative reserve currencies will impact the US. Here’s a very brief overview of the history of dollar dependence. If you’re interested, you can learn way more about this. If you’re a nerd like me, I found this really interesting. I knew a little bit about this, but I dove really deep into it, and it’s a pretty fascinating story. There’s actually a great Planet Money podcast episode. If you don’t listen to that podcast, it’s an NPR production. You can check it out. It’s Planet Money number 553. They go all into basically how this happened if you want to learn about this in more detail. But let me just give you a brief background.US dollar dependence or the dominance of the USD as a currency goes back to the Bretton Woods Monetary Conference back in July of 1944. Basically, back then, it was after D-Day, the allies were starting to feel pretty confident that they were going to win the war. It’s still a good year away, but they were starting to feel confident that they were going to win the war, and they were turning their attention to how they were going to rebuild the world economy after World War II. 44 different countries sent representatives to this giant hotel up in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. That’s why it’s called the Bretton Woods Monetary Conference, and the system that came out of it is called the Bretton Woods System.It’s a long story again of how they argued, who the key players were, but basically what happened at the end of this conference is an agreement that lasted for almost 30 years. In this agreement, they decided that the United States would basically be the dominant world currency. The US’ role would be to fix the value of the US dollar to gold at $35 an ounce. This basically returned the United States to the gold standard, which, if you haven’t heard, the gold standard is basically when a currency like the USD has a corresponding amount of gold held in reserve. For every dollar paper money out there circulating, there was a corresponding dollar’s worth of gold held in reserve by the US government. That is the gold standard.The US had been on the gold standard for a while, but they moved away from it during the depression in the 1930s. But in 1944, at the Bretton Woods Monetary Conference, the US agreed to go back onto the gold standard, and in exchange, other countries would essentially peg their currencies to the dollar. Everywhere in the world, people knew the US dollar could be exchanged for an agreed-upon amount of gold, and the other countries would set a fixed exchange rate to the US dollar. This agreement put the USD at the center of the currency world because it meant that other countries had to hold USDs in reserve to maintain their exchange rate. Remember, we just talked about how countries before could really choose what reserves that they wanted to have in their central bank, but this agreement for most of the major economies in the world meant that they really had to focus their currency reserves on the US dollar. This is basically how dollar dependence started across the world.This went pretty well for the US for a while. It helped the US enjoy an enormous economic expansion in the 1950s. It also allowed the countries, including the US, to participate more easily in trade with one another due to the stability of exchange rates. For a while, it actually went pretty well. However, problems started to arise in the 1970s. The US basically no longer had enough gold to back all of the dollars held abroad. Almost all countries in the world needed USDs as reserves because of this system. For each of those dollars out there, the US needed real gold to back it, but it just didn’t have enough gold. There were also some other factors that were impacting the value of the dollar. Inflation was starting to pick up in the late 1960s, and that was eating away at the perceived value of the dollar.The US started to run a deficit due to an increase in domestic spending and to fund the very expensive Vietnam War that had been going on for a while and was ongoing. Basically, the system was no longer working very well. To solve this problem, the president at the time, Richard Nixon, decided to devalue the US dollar relative to gold. He intended, back in 1971, just to do this temporarily, but the whole system basically collapsed over about a year or two after he did this, people lost faith in the system. After Bretton Woods System collapsed, basically, no other countries were no longer obligated to fix their currencies to the dollar, and they were no longer obligated to hold the USD in reserve. As a result, many economists anticipated that the dollar’s role abroad was going to decline. But instead, what happened was in the decades following the end of the Bretton Woods system, the dollar actually became even more dominant globally.There were a lot of complex reasons for this, but let me just give you some of the highlights. First and foremost, to make a good reserve currency, you’ve got to have a big economy. The US is, by far, the biggest economy in the world. It is still, like I said, 20 to 25% of the world’s GDP, but back in the ’70s and ’80s, it was actually even bigger, so there was a good reason why people wanted to stick with the USD as the reserve. Secondly, they already had a lot of USDs in reserve, so moving might have just been a hassle unless there was an attractive alternative. Third, there wasn’t really an attractive alternative. We also saw a couple of different things. High interest rates in the 1980s made the US treasuries very attractive for an investment in the US in the 1980s was really high because the US was in a major economic boom. Lastly, there was a system, the pseudo-system set up that is known as the petrodollar system.We’re going to get back to this in a little bit. I just want to call it out now, but basically the petrodollar system is an agreement where all oil and gas transactions, which you probably know are huge in nature and scope, are conducted in United States dollars. Saudi Arabia, one of the biggest oil-producing countries, up until recently, has always, always, for the last 50 years, even since the collapse of the Bretton Woods System, when they are selling oil, they sell it in USDs. A lot of countries need to buy oil from Saudi Arabia or for other countries that participate in this petrodollar system, so that gives countries across the whole world a very strong reason to be holding USDs in reserve. Even after the Bretton Woods System, the USD remained the dominant currency reserve, and how dominant it is has certainly fluctuated over time. It’s been 50 years. But again, the USD is still, by any estimation, the dominant reserve. But I do want to say that it has been declining.The dollar share of global foreign exchange reserves fell below 59% back in 2022. It’s hovering around 59% from what I understand. But back in 1999, for example, so almost 25 years ago, it was about 71%, so this has been a long but relatively slow decline. Again, the US is still three times higher than the Euro, 12 times higher than Japan, and 20 times higher than China, so it’s still really dominant. But obviously, there is a reason this stuff is in the news, so let’s get into what is actually happening now because there’s been all this buzz about the USD losing its dominance.There are a bunch of reasons we’re going to get into, but the theme among all these reasons is that other major economies just don’t want to be entirely dependent on the United States Reserve. There are certain downsides for every country that is not the US in being reliant on the US. Countries, basically, if they have more diversity among their currency reserves, they can reduce their exposure to currency fluctuations, interest rate changes, and economic instability from the United States, and that can reduce the risk of financial crisis or financial contagion like we saw in 2008. Let’s just look at a couple of the key players here who are talking about diversifying away from the US.The first is China, and China has been actively looking to establish its currency globally, and this has been going on for several years now. This is not necessarily a new thing. There has been a trade war with China over the last six or seven years or so. As that is heated up, China has increased its focus on moving away from the USD or being entirely reliant on USD. Something notable happened just a couple of weeks ago. Back in March of 2023, China and France completed China’s first settlement for a liquid natural gas trade in March of 2023. Basically, they used the Chinese renminbi rather than USD, and this is one of the first big gas trades in the last 50 years that has not used the USD. Remember, I was talking about the petrodollar system and how basically all oil and gas trades have been using the US dollar.China and France basically just completed a trade that did not use the US dollar, so that’s one of the reasons you’re hearing about this in the news. The second reason you’re hearing about this in the news is the, quote, unquote, “BRICS countries,” which again stand for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. There are five of the largest emerging economies in the world, and basically, these five economies have announced that they intend to develop a reserve currency. That won’t depend on the USD or the Euro. This, and I’ll explain why the euro’s in there too in just a minute, but I just first want to say that this actually hasn’t happened yet, but they’ve been talking about it a lot. There is an intention to pursue a new reserve currency. Brazil has actually already begun to accept trade settlements and investments in Chinese currency, the renminbi.Actually, while I was researching this over the last couple of weeks, the president of Brazil came out and gave a big speech about how they intend to get away from using the US for all of their trade, so they seem pretty serious about this, but it hasn’t happened yet. The third major thing that’s been going on in relation to dollar dominance is the Russia-Ukraine War. In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the US government actually seized the US dollar reserves of the Russian Central Bank, and that was worth nearly $300 billion. The US just seized it. They took it. That was an enormous amount of money. That was the accumulated savings of Russian nation, and it was a really strong illustration of the risk other countries are taking by holding the US dollar, because obviously, the Russian government, the US government, there’s a lot of tension right now.Basically, the US pulled the big flex, and they were like, “We’re just going to take your US reserves.” They basically did that at the flip of a switch. Now, Russian and US relations are worse than most other countries, but I imagine that other countries around the world are looking at that and thinking, “Man, we don’t want that to happen.” They’re not necessarily saying they’re going to get rid of all their US currency reserves, but they’re saying, “Wow, if the US is willing to do that to Russia, maybe they would do that to us too, and it would be smart for us to diversify away from that.” We’ve also seen a lot of trading with Russia recently in different currencies. The trading between the Chinese currency, the renminbi, and the Russian currency, the ruble, has increased 80 fold since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, so we’re already seeing some of these countries, obviously Russia, trading in other currencies other than the USD.The last player here I want to mention is Saudi Arabia. Again, they’re at the center of the petrodollar system. But just a couple of months ago at the 2023 World Economic Forum, for the first time in 48 years, Saudi Arabia’s finance minister said, “The nation is open to trading in other currencies besides the US dollar.” If Saudi Arabia starts accepting trade in other currencies, it could have a negative effect on the dollar’s role as the global currency in international trade, because as we’ve been talking about, oil and gas trades are massive. They’re a huge part of the economy. If Saudi Arabia starts using a different currency, they’re not necessarily saying that they’re going to stop using the USD. I want to make that clear. They’re basically saying they’re open to using other currencies in addition to the US dollar, but even that still could have an impact.Whether we’re talking about Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, the rest of the BRICS countries, a lot of countries are signaling that they want to end or at least reduce their dependence on the US dollar. We need to answer the question, “Will it happen?” All this intention around the world to dethrone the US dollar, or at least create parity. Again, I want to say people aren’t necessarily saying they’re not going to use the US dollar, they want to end this dominance that the US has, and there’s a lot of intention to that. It seems grim, but we don’t know if that’s actually going to happen. To be honest, I’m going to get to the point really quick here, and then I’ll explain why.From everything I’ve read and researched over the last several weeks, it seems that replacing the US dollar is going to be very difficult. The first question is, who will replace the US dollar? Because most competitor currencies face limitations that the dollar simply doesn’t have. First, the size of the economy of the country supplying the currency really matters. Reserve currency status is closely dependent on the issuing country’s economy, and as we’ve talked about, the United States economy, which is roughly $21 trillion, is the largest in the world measured by nominal GDP, and that is followed by China, which is the second-biggest economy in the world, which comes in just under $15 trillion. So it’s about two-thirds of the US economy’s size. China theoretically could be in the second position here in terms of economy, but I’m going to talk about some of the specific restrictions that China faces in the near future.But just so you know, other GDPs, like Japan, which is one of the biggest economies in the world, is only $5 trillion. That’s huge, but it’s a quarter of the US. Germany is under $4 trillion. The UK is under $3 trillion. India is at $2.7 trillion. I’m just saying all these numbers so you’ll see that although these countries have large relative economies relative to the rest of the world, when you compare them to the US, they are still relatively small. That’s factor number one. It’s just the size of the GDP. The US is dominant. China is about two-thirds of the side, so feasibly they can, and we’ll talk about that in just a second. But first, I want to talk about the euro.The euro is the second-biggest reserve currency. Again, it’s about 20%. US is 60%, so it’s about a third. But adoption of the euro as the world currency just doesn’t seem that likely. First, the euro is a really strong currency. It is widely used for trade in Europe. It’s viewed as safe and stable. But the fact is that the eurozone together is not a single country. It is a unification of dozens of countries and therefore doesn’t have a single fiscal policy. This lack of a unified fiscal policy limits its ability to produce enough euro denominated assets to satisfy global demand, so that is a really big restriction. The second one is that Europe and US are really close allies. They often work in partnership. Switching to the Euro would not necessarily offer any additional protection over the dollar for countries like Russia, India, Brazil, or China who are trying to hedge their dependence on the US. Moving from the US to the Euro probably doesn’t really offer them the protection they want because the US and the eurozone tend to act really closely together.That’s the reasons why economists don’t believe the euro is likely to be adopted. Let’s turn to China, and why China isn’t likely to be an alternative at least anytime soon. First, the thing China does have going for is the size of its economy. Again, second-biggest economy in the world, and China is really trying hard to establish its currency as the global currency, but it has a problem. It has a lot of order, known as foreign exchange controls, in place. In China, companies, banks, individuals, they have to comply with what is known as a, quote, unquote, “closed capital account policy.” This basically means that money cannot be freely moved into or out of the country unless it abides by strict foreign exchange rules. Some people would call this currency manipulation or exchange rate manipulation, but basically, China has very strict rules about how its currency is used, so that is not very attractive for countries that are not China. They don’t want to be dependent on a currency that is really closely monitored and manipulated by the Chinese government.China has these capital controls in place so it can control the value of its currency. By becoming the international reserve, China would have to give up that control over the value of its currency, and that would expose it to both unwanted appreciation and/or depreciation devaluations basically of their currency. China has said that they are going to liberalize its foreign exchange market. They’ve said that to the World Trade Organization, but those changes are being introduced gradually, and until they come into play and other countries see them being implemented, it seems unlikely that the Chinese currency is going to be picked up in a major way that could actually rival the US.It will probably grow in terms of its share of currency reserves, but it’s probably not going to challenge the US right now. The third thing is, yes, the BRICS countries have said that they plan to introduce a new reserve currency that could compete with the US, but they haven’t even done that yet, and that’s a long way off. I think it would take years and years, even after they introduce it, for it to compete with the US, so that’s just something we’ll have to keep an eye on. This could obviously change, but as of now, I haven’t found any research that really supports the idea that the US dollar is being threatened in the immediate future. Long term, there is definitely a chance that the US loses ground as the dominant currency, but in the immediate term, it doesn’t look like this really pressing issue.Now, over the long term though, let me just get back to that and say that many economists speculate that we could be heading towards a, quote, unquote, “multipolar” or more plurality in the terms of currency reserves where different currencies are competing to be the major reserve currencies in the world. Now, if that happens and the US does lose some of its basically “market share,” quote, unquote, like its share of global reserves, it could create some issues in the US. Remember, back at the beginning, I talked about some of the benefits of being the world’s reserve currency, and some of those were reversed, so that could increase borrowing costs for the US. It could lessen power projections and influence on the global stage. Remember, we saw how the US basically inserted some influence by seizing US reserves from Russia, so if countries are doing that less, the US would lose that ability, and it could also create competition for currencies.That’s actually not something we’ve seen in quite a while, competition to be the dominant currency. Basically, for the last 80 years, most of the world has basically just accepted the USD, but we don’t know what would happen if different countries were sort of competing to try and be that reserve currency. The last time we saw this was back in the inter-war years between World War I and World War II, when the US and Britain were actually competing, and it created a lot of instability and difficulty for trade. Obviously, it’s a very different world than what it was 90 years ago, so we don’t really know exactly what that would happen, but there is obviously some risk if there is competition. There are some benefits. Some economists think that there are some advantages. Basically, less dependence on the US dollar would lessen the global impact of US financial issues.As we saw in 2008, the global recession that rippled, really, all over to every country in the world started in the US, and the reason it was able to ripple out to all these other countries and cause this big global situation was because the whole world is dependent on the US dollar and the US economy, so less dependence could actually help stabilize the global economy, but not necessarily help the US, but just basically, it wouldn’t ripple out. That could help the US in some ways because if US has a financial crisis but, say, Africa, Europe, Asia, and South America are still doing really well, that could lessen the severity of a recession or financial crisis in the US because there’s growth elsewhere in the world.The other advantage is, it could lessen imbalances in the US and help reduce trade deficits. It could also incentivize the US to close its spending deficits a little bit because borrowing would be more expensive, so there are some advantages, there are some trade-offs. But basically, we don’t really know because the last time the US dollar was not the dominant reserve currency was before World War II, and the world has changed so much that it’s really difficult to speculate what’s going to happen. That is where we stand today. Let me just summarize what we’re talking about right now. The US is still the dominant reserve currency by a very large margin, and there is no current evidence that another currency is coming along to replace the US dollar anytime soon. There definitely will be people trying. That seems evident that other countries are going to try and increase their influence as a reserve currency, but those contenders seem to have a long way to go.To me, and this is just my gut feeling, this is just after studying this for a couple of weeks, my gut feeling is that it does seem likely that the USD will probably lose some share as a global reserve in the coming years, given that other nations have stated their intention to reduce their dependence on the USD. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that the US dollar will be replaced as the number one currency. It just basically means that there might be some more parity. We don’t know how bad or maybe good that might be right now because it’s just something that hasn’t happened in so long.But I think the comforting thing to me is that it will probably happen slowly if it happens at all, so there will be time for the global financial system to react. The reason I think this is because right now there just isn’t really a good contender challenging the US dollar in a real way, and until one gains momentum, it just doesn’t seem like this is going to be a pressing issue. But of course, that can change. Now that I’ve learned about this, I find it fascinating. It’s something I’m going to be following into the future, and I will certainly update you all if there is anything that comes up that you should know about.Thank you all so much for listening. We appreciate it very much. If you have any feedback about this, please hit me up on Instagram, where I’m @thedatadeli. You can also send requests or ideas for shows there as well. If you like this particular episode, please share it with a friend. Share it on social media. We’d love for you to help us spread the word about On The Market and help other people just like you better understand the housing market and better understand the economy. I’m Dave Meyer, and I’ll see you again next time.On The Market is created by me, Dave Meyer, and Kalin Bennett, produced by Kalin Bennett, editing by Joel Esparza and Onyx Media, researched by Pooja Jindal. A big thanks to the entire BiggerPockets team. The content on the show On The Market, are opinions only. All listeners should independently verify data points, opinions, and investment strategies.