Beyond the Bear Market: Why a US Debt Crisis is the Real Long-Term Threat

THE SELF STORAGE REPORT — EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Episode: Timeless Wealth — Real Estate Through the Ages, with Arie Van Gemeren Guest: Arie Van Gemeren — CEO & Founder, Lombard Equity Group; author, "Timeless Wealth: Real Estate Through the Ages"; writer of The Timeless Investor (Substack/podcast); former Private Wealth Advisor at Goldman Sachs; former equity research at Fisher Investments Host: Chris Berg — Land Acquisition, Abernathey Development Recorded: November 12, 2025 Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHMA8G2BZv4 Key topics: From Goldman Sachs/Fisher equities to real estate, the live-in flip that tripled his money, stocks vs. real estate timing (2013 vs. today), the 18.6-year real estate cycle and mid-to-late 2026, fiat debasement and gold, shadow banking through history, the Panic of 1866 (Overend Gurney) and private credit as today's version, defensive portfolio positioning, his mentor's three rules (good real estate, good locations, never max leverage), the self-storage consolidation and AI-operations thesis, the Hanseatic League ("own the boxes"), 1929 parallels and wealth inequality, data centers as the next infrastructure boom, OpenAI and government backing, advice to young men, faith and business. Note: Speaker attribution reconstructed from raw captions. Light cleanup of transcription errors only; wording preserved. YouTube chapter markers removed from body text. ————————————————————————————— Chris Berg: Welcome to the Self Storage Report. I'm your host, Chris Berg, land acquisition for Abernathey Development. We've got a very special guest today — I think I would dub him as sort of this historical behavioral finance person. He's got an incredible background. Right now he's the CEO and founder of Lombard Equity Group. He's also got a great podcast out and a Substack, The Timeless Investor — we'll talk more about that throughout the show. He's an author — I don't know how he does all this stuff — of "Timeless Wealth: Real Estate Through the Ages," which we're going to dive into today; he had a great piece on his Substack about it. Private wealth advisor with Goldman Sachs. He was with Fisher Investments. Also a D1 athlete at UC Davis. And as he mentioned before the show, also a father of four. How he's doing all this, I don't know. But Arie Van Gemeren — welcome to the show. It's great to have you. Arie Van Gemeren: Thanks for having me, Chris. It's a pleasure to be here. Chris Berg: I have so much I want to talk to you about, because I really do enjoy your content — and I'm only chuckling because you and I had this great conversation before the show. What I want to get at is: you're at Goldman Sachs, Fisher Investments — I'm assuming very equities-focused — but now you're doing real estate. Why that transition, especially knowing how closely I assume you were watching the returns in the equity class? Arie Van Gemeren: Yeah — well, it's a multivariate story. When I was in equity research at Fisher, I really bought into the firm belief — public stocks all day long, liquid assets — which is a great investment, and you'll never hear me poo-pooing the stock market as an investment, unlike many of my colleagues in this business who are real-estate-focused exclusively. I was in equity research, a true die-hard believer in stocks. And a senior research analyst pulled me aside — he'd been there like 40 years — and said, "Hey kid, come check this out." He had consolidated the returns of real estate over time, and he said, "Real estate has outperformed the stock market — by a lot — over this time period. We say all this stuff about stocks because that's what we invest in, but real estate's done really well." That was the first light bulb for me. The second light bulb: my wife's family is Persian, and — not to make generalizations — a lot of folks who immigrate to the United States are big believers in real assets. They constantly acquire, they own, and they don't invest in the stock market. I used to go back and forth with my father-in-law on this. We bought our first place in the San Francisco Bay Area — a tiny little cottage, like a thousand square feet, for $500,000, in the East Bay. My father-in-law said, "You have to buy this house. You're going to make a killing on it." And I was like, "Ah, I'd rather have it in the index funds, the stock market, blah blah blah." Well, fast forward: we did maybe $60,000 of work on it. We added a bedroom, built a second bathroom, added a garage — did it really inexpensively. My wife and I lived in it — a live-in flip, with billowing tarps and dust everywhere. And the home reappraised for $950 grand after that work. So I bought the home with maybe $120K down, put $60K into it, and tripled, quadrupled my money. I thought, "This is very compelling — I can't do this with stocks." Picking a stock is a difficult business if you want to produce abnormal returns. We refinanced out of the house, and with that money I bought several apartment complexes, did the same value-add improvement, refinanced out of those, and kept buying apartment complexes. So I was completely sold the whole time I was at Goldman. I was a private wealth advisor at Goldman, and I had the privilege of meeting incredibly wealthy individuals all across the Bay Area. The ones that really stood out to me were the real estate guys. There was one gentleman — a very well-to-do tech founder, a Middle Eastern guy — and he said, "Arie, my business makes great money, but I was always taught: buy real estate. From the day I came to this country, I just bought real estate. And today my real estate makes me more money than my tech company — and I don't have to work if I don't want to, because I have this portfolio." All of this was in my head, and eventually I said: I've got to move on from the investment management world and get into the real estate business. I'd been doing it on my own account; I was ready to go big with investors and follow the same tried-and-true strategy. So it was a 10-to-11-year transformation from all-in on stocks to now — our family assets are 100% in real estate right now. Which is arguable whether that's a good choice, but that's where we are today. Chris Berg: Well, I appreciate you being so frank and candid, because that's actually where I was going. I'm curious — when you had this conversation with that gentleman at Fisher, when he said real estate has actually performed better — when was that? Because coming up to today, with the whole AI boom and the Mag 7, there have been some pretty hefty returns in the equity arena. Comparing to today, would you still say real estate has performed better? Arie Van Gemeren: Yeah — it's interesting. That conversation was in 2013. So it encompassed the very bad drawdown of 2008, for stocks and for real estate. Real estate did really well from 2013 through 2023, and then obviously we are in a bear market in the asset class right now. The stock market is a leading indicator of what's happening in the economy, and the stock market, at least right now, is at an all-time high, while real estate is quite low at the moment. I remember a good conversation with a client — this was maybe late '23 — saying, "Hey, the stock market's way down. How's real estate doing?" And I said, "As of now, values haven't really declined yet — but it's coming." And it did come. So at this point in time, I think the opportunity is in real estate. You have an all-time-high stock market — arguably in bubble territory, judged by any number of metrics — and real estate is in a deep bear. You're seeing really good opportunities to buy things at substantially reduced bases. They don't track each other perfectly: stocks are up here, real estate's down here. It used to be the reverse — that was the time to buy stocks. I think now is the time to buy real estate. Chris Berg: So let's get into where you see things and where they're going. Thaddeus Campbell and I, who co-host this show, have talked a lot about this book — you and I discussed it in our first conversation — "The Secret Life of Real Estate and Banking." It lays out this 18.6-year real estate cycle. I don't think you've read it — it's pretty arduous, and you've got a lot on your plate — but the thesis essentially says mid-to-late 2026 is when the land market really starts to go down. Are you familiar with Henry George? Did we talk about Henry George the first time we spoke? Arie Van Gemeren: I don't recall. Chris Berg: A famous economist back in the late 1800s — ran for mayor of New York. His premise, when you look at economics, was land, capital, and labor. Since then, economics has really stripped out land — nobody monitors land. Even Peter Thiel these days — tech guys are starting to look at Henry George and say, look, land ultimately takes all the gains; it captures all the rents. I say all that because you've got such an incredible historical background. Do you concur with this mid-to-late 2026 thesis — that land prices start to go down, the banking system starts to show fragility, and things maybe get even worse than 2008? What's your thesis right now? Arie Van Gemeren: That's a big question. I think there are a couple of factors hitting at once, and a bunch of variables you've got to build into this thing. First of all, the entire world has converted to a fiat economic system. Every single country, in unison, is printing money, monetizing debt, driving the value of currency down. That's one of the reasons you've seen gold have this absolutely unbelievable run — you talk about stock market returns; gold has outperformed the stock market dramatically over this period. And I don't own a lot of gold — it's not a huge part of my thesis — but you could argue gold's rising price is indicative of disbelief in the economy: a belief that currency is being devalued systematically, across the West and the East. It's not like China doesn't print money — nobody runs a sound currency system anymore. Historically, that correlates well with land and assets holding value. But there are caveats. Real estate itself doesn't perform great in an economic collapse scenario either — the business pressure in a collapse affects real estate just like the stock market: residents have trouble paying rent, businesses close. But historically, real estate is a fantastic hedge against inflation and against debasement. In every single historic instance of heavy debasement, landowners come out ahead, because the value of land jumps dramatically. So — I think there's a lot more pressure in the system than people really respect or see. There's a worrying degree of movement by politicians — and this is not to blame politicians; this is how politicians operate — it's easier to cause inflation, to print away problems, than to make sound economic decisions. And we're not able to do anything about what the government wants to do; everybody is doing it in tandem. So the only thing investors have to ask themselves is: how do you protect yourself and your family? To me, that's hard assets. It's real estate in supply-constrained locations. Gold is a good hedge — has been. Some folks like Bitcoin; I'll withhold my judgment one way or the other on that asset class. But I do think there's something coming down the pipe that's not going to look great. I think there's going to be a moment where we have to figure out what to do with our growing debt pile — the US government's cost to service its own debt is rising and rising. So yes, I think we're entering a period where hard assets, business ownership, real equity in companies is going to be more and more valuable. Chris Berg: You did a really good piece on the 1866 bank run — I think you called it Black Friday — and I love how you set it up: something happened in January of 1866, but that was just a catalyst; what really took place came in May. It's always one of those situations where you may not see it coming, and all of a sudden you go, "Oh — that's what it was." Again, this is all guesstimation, but what do you see coming down the pipeline — maybe a regional bank thing or whatever — that could be the catalyst that starts to cause some real structural challenges within the banking system? Arie Van Gemeren: So — in the history of economies, one of the major trends we focus on a lot at The Timeless Investor is the rise of shadow banking: unregulated financial activities that sit outside the view of government regulators. And I'm not saying that to argue government regulation is a good thing — because we, the royal we, will always find a way to circumvent regulation and put capital to work where we want to put it to work. The Panic of 1866 piece you mentioned is a good example. It was an unregulated financial system, and Overend Gurney was one of these blue-chip, top-tier banking houses. They started taking on a more and more dangerous style of investment, unbeknownst to the public that was investing with them, and those investments started to fall apart. And as you mentioned, Chris, these collapses are often catalyzed by something unexpected, out on the periphery, that punctures a hole in the story. That's what happened with Overend Gurney — a completely unrelated bank failed for a different reason, there was a cascade effect, and then Overend Gurney fell. Shadow banking is observable as a trend throughout most of human history: unregulated finance, people searching for ways to make capital. So the question today is: what is our version of shadow banking? Because it happens over and over again. And I would argue today it's private credit. Private credit is billed as a riskless way to make money — you have good collateral, there's no risk, you're going to earn good money on it. Which is basically the argument of every financial product ever pitched to anybody by Wall Street: this is the one; this one's going to get you a great return without a lot of risk. And private credit is exploding — a huge industry, starting to generate a lot of conversations. What's more concerning: historically, the investors in private credit were institutions — but institutions are starting to back away from it. Now, with the aid of a pro-business administration pulling back some of the safeguards for private investors, they're coming after private investor capital — talking about private credit going into your 401(k) plan. It's a massively growing space that, like every situation before it, is billed as a riskless way to make a return. And you can see it with the collapse of some of these subprime auto loan groups, which fall in that same space — that could be the catalyst. These things take months. It's not like it happens and then everything immediately collapses — there's weakness here, and then it starts to spread. And if you think about it, much of the private credit world is investing in businesses — and businesses are highly exposed to the economy. As we just saw with the payroll numbers, I wouldn't say the business system is doing great right now. There's a lot of pressure, coupled with rising debt burdens for those businesses, and there's private credit on top of it with tons of capital flowing in. It could be the catalyst. It might not be — I don't want to sit here talking Chicken Little with the sky falling — but it has the components of being something kind of nasty. Chris Berg: Yeah. People who watch the show regularly are fairly adept at this 18.6-year real estate cycle. So if we go out to mid-to-late '26 and this thing comes to fruition, you start to see some cracks in the system. What's going to be fascinating is that with AI, potentially, profits could go up — so stocks could continue to buoy the system a little bit. But with all that said, let's speak to the average person watching the show. You've got this incredible background in private wealth — and again, this isn't investment advice, I want to be clear on that — but if you were a CIO, what would you be doing right now to hedge, protect, and manage your investments and mitigate risk? Arie Van Gemeren: Well — the classic answer, if you think something bad is happening, is to be in gold or cash, right? That's the baseline scenario. As a former private wealth advisor, I would never suggest someone go to cash, for a variety of reasons. You could be wrong and the market could rip. There's a really great data point on what would have happened if you bought at every market peak as a constant investor over time in the stock market — your returns are not that different over the long term versus if you'd captured the lows. People are really fixated on the ultimate level of the stock market. So I say that to say: I would never suggest someone go to cash. And I would add that if you anticipate inflation is going to rise, cash is the worst place to be. It's actually not a riskless place at all — you lose money every single year on your money. So I would propose a defensive portfolio. Gold is interesting — a classic defensive hedging asset class — however, it's at a very high point right now, so I don't know that gold is riskless at the moment. Certainly nothing is ever riskless. Broadly diversified — you know, I don't think you'd want to be in bonds right now. If inflation goes up, there's a real risk that bond rates go up, and as listeners most likely know, just like real estate: the yield rises, the value falls. If inflation goes up, bonds will have to rise to provide a real return to investors. Our strategy at our firm has been — again, I think real estate is a good place to be right now for a variety of reasons, and there are certain asset classes within real estate trading at very low values at the moment. You can pick up really good deals, put conservative debt on them, and hold through conceivably anything that comes up. I have a mentor in the real estate business — 53 years in the trenches, been through I think six different cycles, and he never lost a dime in real estate. I asked him, "What's your strategy?" And he said: "Good real estate, good locations, and I never took as much debt as the bank wanted me to take. Those three kept me safe my whole career — I've never had to turn a building back to the bank or even do a capital call." The lender would say, "Your building's great, we can give you 70%," and he'd say, "I'm good with 50. Make it 50." He was willing to accept a slightly lower return to stay alive. And I really think, if you look at the history of big real estate investors over time, the ones who survive are the ones who were conservative with their risk-taking. They didn't go for the home run on every single at-bat. That's the name of the game. At the end of the day, the ones we talk about are the ones that survived — and the question is why they survived. It's not the alpha male building a huge building at the worst possible time, pouring everything into it, and going bankrupt — which is happening, unfortunately, to a lot of people right now. Chris Berg: You mentioned different asset classes — you're predominantly multifamily, I think, correct? Arie Van Gemeren: Correct. Chris Berg: What are the asset classes where you'd say, "Hey Chris, this is where I think there's some real opportunity"? And as you know, we're in self-storage, so I'm curious about your take on what you're seeing in that asset class right now. Arie Van Gemeren: Well, the self-storage thesis is interesting. I'm not a self-storage guy, and I don't pretend to know a lot about it — but I did just interview an amazing guy, Brad Minsley, who I hope you have on your show really soon. An incredible individual. The story in self storage is pretty well laid out at this point, right? You have a lot of mom-and-pop owners transitioning out, smaller buildings, and an opportunity to consolidate those assets. There's also a major operational opportunity in self-storage, from my understanding. Many facilities haven't really leaned into AI, remote systems, remote locking systems. This is back-of-envelope math — I don't know the numbers exactly — but your average REIT has three employees per self-storage facility. If you can own an asset and drive down the number of employees it takes to run it — massive improvement. And if you can buy from a mom-and-pop in a small rural market that doesn't have access to other self-storage facilities — I mean, I think that's the name of the game: developing a really strong operations ecosystem, driving down the costs, and then holding that thing. That, to me, is the self-storage play. I'm also interested in industrial. One of the timeless principles I've seen across time, and across different big owners across time, is: owning the boxes where people put stuff — whether it's self storage, industrial warehouses, or other facilities — is a timeless principle that works incredibly well. I wrote a piece about the Hanseatic League — I'm partially German, so it's an incredible German story — this crazy confederation of cities that aggregated merchant assets across the Baltic Sea and controlled the warehouse facilities across 200 different cities, starting around 1200 AD and ending around 1600–1700 AD. That story — owning critical infrastructure that is necessary, in prime locations — repeats over and over and over again. In some ways I kick myself for getting into multifamily; I should have been a warehouse guy. But I think the story applies to multifamily as well, especially in supply-constrained cities. And depending on your thesis for what the future of trade looks like — coastal-city warehousing, coastal-city industrial could be an interesting play. Right now it's probably very depressed because trade is down. It's not my space, but it might be an opportunity to pick up infrastructure assets that will last for the long term. Chris Berg: Can you back up to that story a little bit? Because I saw snippets of what you're talking about — and if I remember correctly, these guys ran an incredible business for like 500 years. It was "when merchants defeated kings," right? Arie Van Gemeren: Yeah — I mean, it's an unbelievable story. I'll do it quickly. The story begins around 1100 AD. Europe was a mess: you've got Vikings, pirates, rogue states. Getting your goods from, say, Russia to London — very difficult, very likely you die. It started with a confederation between the cities of Lübeck and Hamburg — the merchants in those cities made a deal to work together, and it grew into a huge chain of merchants who started to build warehousing facilities in prime chokepoint locations. And the catalyst for the whole thing was herring — the fish that comes out of the Baltic Sea. Herring was a nearly infinite resource in the Baltic: it provided protein, it was easily storable, and the Catholic Church mandated meatless Fridays and meatless periods, so there was tremendous demand. They also used it for oil. So it was an incredibly important resource — but hard to move around. The Hanseatic League was a conglomeration of merchants who aggregated capital to buy the storage facilities, and then they controlled all the chokepoints. When merchants came through, they needed a place to store their goods, and security and protection moving goods between places — and the Hanseatic League controlled that infrastructure. And they never sold. They worked together as a league, with communal ownership; nobody was ever allowed to sell, and they produced dividends based on the warehousing, the protection duties, the different things that went into it. They became so powerful that when the King of Denmark tried to tax goods passing through the Hanseatic League, this group of merchants organized a navy and an army, assaulted Denmark, defeated the Danes in naval combat, and sacked Copenhagen. And for 70 years afterwards, Denmark could not crown a king without the Hanseatic League signing off. So my point is: the most boring strategy imaginable — let me own the boxes where other people put their stuff; I don't even own the goods, I just own the box and the trade routes — was powerful enough to overthrow kings. They also had a war with Poland — won it. They fought England at one point — beat England. And many of their sites still stand today as UNESCO World Heritage sites all around the Baltic. It's a really incredible, timeless story of why it pays to own good assets in good locations at chokepoints for trade. Chris Berg: Boy, that is a great story — thank you for sharing that. We'll put it in the show notes so people can check it out. I'm curious — again, you've got this incredible historical background in finance. Based on where we're at today and where you believe we're going in the next 18 to 24 months: what's the best analogy? "Hey Chris, this reminds me of the 1970s." "This reminds me of 1866." What era do you think we're in right now, and why? Arie Van Gemeren: Well — unfortunately, I think we're looking very similar to the pre-World War II era. I hate to say that, but I think it's true. There are a couple of factors that are very alarming, and I've talked about this a lot in my writing. When wealth inequality gets to a level that's unsustainable, you have the rise of very extreme political philosophies. The last time wealth inequality was as high as it is today was 1929. Now — I'm not going to say we're going into a Great Depression, and I hope to God we're not going into another world war — but we are definitely leaning into more extreme political philosophies on the right and the left, and I'd say a large part of that is a component of rising wealth inequality. I really feel that when people feel the system is leaving them behind, they make a political move to do something different. 1929 gave rise to fascism, to virulent communism, to very extreme political philosophies in the United States as well — much of Western Europe could easily have voted in communist governments around that time, because wealth inequality was really high. And the driver, in my opinion, from what I've researched, is fiat currency and currency debasement. Currency debasement disproportionately benefits asset owners and business owners. You had it in Germany, obviously, with the Weimar Republic and the predatory reparations the Allies demanded from Germany. Look at the rise of Hitler: he rose out of a system that enabled him to rise because the currency was so debased that people would do anything to change the situation. Inflation was rising, and then you had the Great Depression, which struck around the same time and was a function of excessive debt levels. Today, the parallels are sort of uncanny. We have a rapidly debasing currency. Asset holders have gotten very, very wealthy. We have rising wealth inequality. There are a lot of really good charts on this topic — look at what it takes for an American to buy their first home. I use this as a rough gauge — there are more precise measures of wealth inequality — but owning your own home is the number one way to build equity, build credit, be part of the system, and feel like the system is working for you. The time it took an average American, saving, to buy a home in 1970 was about two years. It is over seven years today — in some cases much higher, depending on where in the country you live. What is that saying? The dollar has gone down in value. Wages have not kept up with asset prices. And it's been happening since Nixon broke the gold standard. Did he really have a choice? Not entirely — there were a lot of other factors — but we did it, and since then, this has happened. What I feel we're seeing today is rising political ideology on both sides, diverging further and further apart — which is a very alarming scenario. So unfortunately, I'd say 1929. I think that's the parallel. Chris Berg: I like the way you framed that. There was a great email — I think it was 2020 — that Peter Thiel sent to Zuck and some other guys saying, look, when people can't afford a house and can't be part of this capitalist system, they're just going to throw in the towel and say, "Give me something else." I think that's what you saw happen in New York City. And I think that's potentially what you could see going into 2026 — that's why I've got this uneasy feeling about 2026. Have you read "The Fourth Turning" by Neil Howe? Arie Van Gemeren: No — but people tell me I should, all the time. Chris Berg: Please do — because he's got this great cyclical way of looking at history, which you'd appreciate. He says every 80 years — the Revolution, then the Civil War, then World War II — and now we're coming up on the 80-year mark, where it's probably going to be some sort of world war. Whether that's a hot war or a finance war, we'll see how it bears out. And it's fascinating, Arie — just to put a button on it — we're probably headed into some sort of war in the next, I'd say, 12 to 24 months. I pray that doesn't happen. But based on what's happening with money — did you ever see the video "All Wars Are Banker Wars"? Arie Van Gemeren: Yeah. Chris Berg: There you go. When you talk about what we're doing with the currency — it was fascinating. I was at a self-storage event in Vegas in early September, and we had a group of Christians come together Thursday morning just to pray about the industry. We're sitting there, and all of a sudden the Lord's like, "You really need to pray for the Federal Reserve." I've never done that before in my life! But that's where my heart's at. I think — what is it — 87% of assets are now owned by maybe the top 10% of people, and with that distribution, gosh, if you're 24, 25, you're asking: why would I want to be part of that system? It's completely broken. It's done nothing for me. Arie Van Gemeren: No, exactly. And it's ironic — the only limiting factor today is nuclear weapons. It's kind of a crazy thing to say, but if we didn't have nuclear weapons, we would have had a hot war with the Soviet Union — no question. Europe would have been ravaged by war with the Soviet Union. If we didn't have nuclear weapons, we would be fighting Russia right now in Ukraine. It is one of the great ironies of history that this weapon with the capacity to destroy the entire world has actually minimized death in war since World War II, dramatically. The pressure valves unfortunately fall on the third world, which ends up hosting proxy wars between the major countries. You're seeing it in Ukraine. It will probably happen in Taiwan. It will probably happen in Venezuela. These wars happen in places where nuclear weapons can't really be used. That's how we fight. So hopefully that holds it off. Chris Berg: That's a fair point — especially if you go back to "all wars are banker wars." And I think you could almost use that "third world" term differently: the debasement of our currency — if you went and talked to some 20-year-olds right now, they wouldn't say America's third-world, because they don't have the reference, but I could see where they could make that argument. The debasement, to me, seems almost like the war that's being fought. Which — I want to get your thesis on this: what's going to be the catalyst? Do you think data centers could be the catalyst for this next unraveling? And on the currency piece — I don't know how much you've followed the GENIUS Act and stablecoins, where Secretary Bessent is suggesting stablecoins are going to save the dollar and cause more proliferation of the USD. What are your thoughts? Arie Van Gemeren: Well — you mentioned data centers, and it's actually a really interesting point. I'm working on a piece right now comparing basically every infrastructure boom. The first-generation builders of an infrastructure boom are not the ones who make money. It's the second and third owners — who take it over from the now-bankrupt infrastructure builders — who actually make money. If you look at the history of infrastructure buildouts — the railroads, fiber-optic cables in the '80s and '90s, and data centers today — they all follow a very similar trajectory. Except that the amount of money flowing into data centers as a percentage of GDP, compared to previous infrastructure booms, is a magnitude higher — something like 14% of GDP is projected to go into building data centers. I think I just saw this stat: OpenAI just pledged to invest something like $1.3 trillion into data centers. With what money? Where's the money? And you mentioned before the call — them asking for backing from the US government. Why? Probably because — how are they going to bankroll that on, what is it, $13 billion in annual revenue? Come on. Chris Berg: So I'd love your thesis on that — because now OpenAI is coming to the government saying, hey, you need to back us. Which could be the downfall of a lot more than just some private credit guys. Arie Van Gemeren: Yeah. And the question is — I think the government is likely to back them, because OpenAI can portray it as a national race with China: you have to put money into this. But then, where does the government come up with the money? And the answer is: print money. As it always is. Now — do we need the infrastructure? Probably. But what's the short-term ramification of this massive buildout in an industry that's not really proven yet? OpenAI is an incredible company — I use it all the time, I use all these tools all the time, they're great. But is there a there there? Or are we in 1999? We used to say in equity research: every bubble has something about it that's true. It's a valid thesis — it's just ahead of where the value needs to be at that time. The late-1999 tech bubble wasn't wrong; it was early. A lot of money went into tech, and it was eventually proven right — but those people still lost their shirts on that round. I would venture to guess that's where we are with AI. Obviously it's a great technology with a clear use case — but there's irrational exuberance, to quote my man Greenspan. Chris Berg: To put a button on this and start wrapping up — you look at the job numbers here in October: decimated, as far as what's going on with hiring. There's probably going to be more unemployment because of AI. And then what do you do when no one can afford their power bill, because power costs keep rising? It's just a weird dynamic. So for the person watching: how would you sum up this conversation? Being in your shoes, what are the things they should be aware of to mitigate risk and keep their assets? Arie Van Gemeren: Look — the whole premise of what we do — obviously I run a real estate investment company; we're believers in acquiring real assets long-term — but the whole premise of The Timeless Investor, our digital brand and our voice, in terms of tying historical events to modern-day affairs, is this. I like to quote the Bible on this: there's nothing new under the sun. Nothing. Everything has been done before. We've seen everything before. There's really nothing that's truly new and unique — I suppose the counterpoint would be nuclear arms — but generally speaking, economic cycles have all happened over and over and over again. Chris Berg: I just love what you talk about — go ahead. Arie Van Gemeren: The reason these cycles happen over and over again is that human nature never changes. And humans are the driving force of history. As long as human nature doesn't change — and I get a kick out of our modern world, because we often think we're superior and better today; arguably we're better educated, to an extent, though I'd argue classical Romans were well educated too — we are not that different from people who lived 5,000 years ago. Our motivations are not that different. Our ambitions, our desires — they're not different. We made the comment on shadow banking earlier: we will always find a way to circumvent systems. Nothing has changed. There is nothing new under the sun; things repeat. And the whole premise of The Timeless Investor is that if you look at history, you can glean the right way to protect yourself and build wealth in most scenarios — from those who have gone before, or those who are currently doing it. I mentioned my mentor and his rule on debt utilization in real estate. I mentioned the Hanseatic League. You can look at the Grosvenor family in England as another classic example — 380 years owning the same properties. You can glean from history what it takes to survive most economic scenarios. You could even glean from history what it takes to survive imperial collapse or national decline — which I'm not saying we're going into; that's the very bad case. But you can figure out, through timeless principles, what it takes to survive. And the general answer is: be conservative, don't overuse debt, buy real assets, protect yourself against currency debasement — and do the right thing. That's my list. And I think it's echoed by history, and echoed by great builders across time. Chris Berg: You kind of just answered this question, but I've got two more for you. You said you have four kids — do you have any sons? Arie Van Gemeren: Three boys. Chris Berg: Three boys — okay. Something I'm really passionate about right now is working with young men in that demographic. If you look at the research, the data is horrendous — education, finances, a lot of them moving back in with their parents. Given your experience in private wealth, your background studying economic history: if you were going to sit down with a young man right now — say he's watching the show — what would you say to him about building his future, especially his financial future? Arie Van Gemeren: Yeah. I'll echo a quote my dad told me when I started off in the working world — because I had a low income in the Bay Area starting out, and it was kind of tough. He always said to me: "Don't worry about the money right now. Worry about learning and getting better at what you're doing, and the money will come." And like I said in my timeless principles — do the right thing, be good. I think there's a lot to that. We have a world today that really prioritizes short-term wins. I love to reference the Colonel of Kentucky Fried Chicken — he started that business when he was 68, and I believe the reason was he couldn't cash his pension check, so he had to figure it out. We're so used to seeing young people make exorbitant amounts of money really quickly that we forget that's not normal — and it's still not normal. Most wealth is built over time, with patience, wisdom, and accumulation. Take the long view — always, 100% of the time. That would be my advice, and that's what I tell my kids. Chris Berg: So good. Last question. You mentioned the Bible a moment ago — one of the things I wanted to ask you is how your faith fuels your business. How does it impact it? Arie Van Gemeren: Yeah — well, I'm Catholic, so I have a healthy degree of Catholic guilt in my life. We do a lot of service work in our community. I've spent a lot of time with the church feeding homeless people, talking to them, sharing the gospel, doing whatever I can to help them on the streets. And you see real deprivation and struggle in people. My faith has given me a lot of belief that our job is not just to do well for ourselves, but to do well for others — and I don't mean that in a trite way. One of the manifestations for us: we try, with our buildings, to serve our residents as much as we can. For example, we just rolled out a new program to help residents build credit — if they pay rent on time, they can build credit, and hopefully they can go buy a home. We can help turn this cycle, and start helping non-homeowners build credit. A lot of that is informed by faith — by a belief that we should treat one another as brothers and sisters, that no one is better than anyone else, that we're all in this together. I try to treat our compatriots and partners that way. The Catholic Church in particular is a big proponent of universal brotherhood — we are all together. I really feel that in our day-to-day work, and we try to emulate it with our residents as well. Chris Berg: Arie, great stuff. I want to give people a chance to find out more about you — let me bring this up. If you want to check out The Timeless Investor, which you just heard about — fantastic, fantastic content — there's the URL. And if you want to reach out to him at Lombard Equity, they can just go to the website and email you, Arie, correct? Arie Van Gemeren: Yep. Chris Berg: Fantastic. Anything else you want to add or share, sir? Arie Van Gemeren: Not at all. It's been a pleasure being here, Chris. This was a great conversation, and I hope the listeners found some value in it. I look forward to coming back on at some point in the future. Chris Berg: Me too, man. I got a ton of value out of it — everything you shared was fantastic, and we'll definitely do this again. Keep up the great work, and thank you. Arie Van Gemeren: Awesome. Thank you so much. Chris Berg: Thank you. The Self Storage Report — I'm Chris Berg. We'll see you back here very soon. — END OF TRANSCRIPT —