TL;DR
A macro analyst who's been calling the debt crisis since 2022 just compared February 2026 to July 2007.
That's not a random comparison. In July 2007, two Bear Stearns hedge funds collapsed. Nobody panicked. Eight months later, Bear Stearns itself was gone. Six months after that, Lehman went down and the entire financial system nearly collapsed.
He thinks we're in that same window right now. And he has four years of receipts.
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## "February 2026 Was the Equivalent of July 2007"
Luke Gromen runs FFTT, a macro research firm. He's been appearing on podcasts since 2022 laying out a thesis about the end of the sovereign debt system. What Bitcoin Did. TFTC. Forward Guidance. The Peter McCormack Show. This Week in Bitcoin.
His track record on the big calls speaks for itself:
- Gold: ~$1,920/oz in March 2022. Hit an all-time high of $5,595 in January 2026. Up 190%.
- Bitcoin: ~$40,000 when he called it a hedge against the money printer. Hit $126,000 in October 2025.
- 10-year Treasury yield: under 2.5% when he warned bond markets were out of options. Spiked past 5% eighteen months later.
He's missed on timing and magnitude in places. But the direction on the big ones has been right.
Now for his latest prediction - a hammer.
In March 2026, on The Peter McCormack Show, he said this:
> "I think we're gonna look back in six months, twelve months, eighteen, twenty four months time, and we're gonna say February 2026 was the equivalent of July 2007."
That's a big claim. But Luke backs it up with a very strong track record. So let's take a look.
The Receipts (2022-2025)
March 2022 (TFTC, "The Popping of the 100 Year Sovereign Debt Bubble"): Gromen says the sovereign debt bubble, 100 years in the making, "may be beginning to pop." The language is conditional. He's building the framework.
September 2023 (Forward Guidance): He calls it: the bond market will panic unless oil prices drop or the dollar weakens. Within weeks, 10-year Treasury yields spike to levels not seen in over a decade.
November 2023 (What Bitcoin Did): He says the quiet part out loud. Despite the hawkish talk, money printing will resume. The debt levels make it inevitable. By late 2024, the Fed had begun cutting rates.
October 2025 (What Bitcoin Did, "Has the Debt Spiral Started?"): He lays out the binary. Default or print. "When you do dumb stuff with borrowed money for 40 years... you eventually get to this point."
October 2025 (TFTC, "China's Rare Earth Dominance and the End of the Dollar"): Central banks are visibly rotating from Treasuries to gold reserves. Gold hits multiple all-time highs throughout 2025.
December 2025 (This Week in Bitcoin, "The Perfect FUD"): Gromen sells a large portion of his Bitcoin. The community is shocked. His reasoning: tariffs will strengthen the dollar short term, and a strong dollar blows up everything.
His language shifted from "may be beginning to pop" in 2022 to "the only debate is how fast" in 2026. That's not a pundit changing his mind. That's an analyst watching his thesis play out.
What He's Saying Now
"China Was the First AI"
On What Bitcoin Did in October 2025, Gromen draws a parallel that cuts deep. What AI is about to do to white-collar workers is exactly what offshoring did to blue-collar workers when China entered the WTO.
> "My mental model for all of this is what happened to the U.S. Rust Belt when China went into the WTO. China was the first AI."
> "Everything I'm hearing from people on what AI is going to do to white collar is exactly what I heard from blue collar guys. I used to golf every Saturday."
His late father-in-law was a Teamster union official in Cleveland. He watched the Rust Belt hollowing happen firsthand. Now he sees the same pattern starting in office towers.
AI drives productivity without creating jobs. In a system built on debt, that's fatal. White-collar workers represent 50% of the tax base. As those wages deflate, the bottom Jenga blocks get pulled from government revenue. He calls it a "mathematical bookkeeping guarantee to blow up the entire freaking system."
The Dollar Is 85% Overvalued
On TFTC in October 2025 ("China's Rare Earth Dominance"), Gromen lays out an energy argument that's hard to argue with:
> "A gig of electricity is a gig of electricity. It's not like there's some special yuan gig of electricity that gets them more or less power. They abide by the same physics. So if their gig of electricity costs 85% cheaper than ours, you know what that tells me?"
> "A dollar's 85% overvalued against the yuan."
> "It's that simple. That's where this movie's going."
If energy is the fundamental input and China's energy costs 85% less, the dollar isn't just overvalued. It's structurally mispriced. And that mispricing has to resolve one way or another.
The Only Way Out
By February 2026, on The Peter McCormack Show ("The Collision of AI and Debt"), everything conditional in his framework has become mathematical.
The US is in what Gromen calls Zugzwang. Every move makes things worse. Raise rates to save the bond market? You choke off investment for the industrial and AI race. Devalue the dollar? You spark inflation. There's no clean move.
His prescription: a one-time snap devaluation of the dollar against gold. He gives a 2-5 year window (2026-2031). Without it, the Treasury market breaks in 7-10 days under any serious stress.
He wants a "great communicator" like FDR to level with the public. Apologize for offshoring the industrial base. Apologize for financializing the economy. Then launch a bipartisan 10-20 year reshoring effort.
The difference between now and 2008? Federal debt-to-GDP was 60% then. It's over 120% now. There's no balance sheet room for bailouts.
> "And they'll print the money. I don't know how they're going to get there. To me, the only debate is how fast."
How I Tracked All of This
These clips came from five different podcasts over four years. No single listener caught all of them.
I used PullThatUpJamie.ai to search across all of them at once. Jamie is a podcast search and context engine. Type in a person, a topic, and a time range, and it finds the exact moments, with timestamps and clips you can verify.
Google gives you the latest take. Jamie gives you the evolution.
Jamie is open to humans and agents alike. Explore it yourself at pullthatupjamie.ai/app. Building something? Point your agent at pullthatupjamie.ai/llms.txt.
Try it:
Gromen is just one guest across one corner of the index. Jamie covers 170+ feeds from Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman to Huberman Lab, All-In, Planet Money, Tim Ferriss, Bloomberg, and dozens more. Pick a person. Pick a topic. Watch how their thinking evolves.
FAQ
Who is Luke Gromen? Luke Gromen is the founder of FFTT, a macro research firm focused on sovereign debt, energy markets, and monetary policy. He's a frequent guest on What Bitcoin Did, TFTC, Forward Guidance, and The Peter McCormack Show.
What is Luke Gromen's main prediction for 2026?
Gromen believes the US will be forced into a one-time devaluation of the dollar against gold within 2-5 years (2026-2031). He views this as the only viable alternative to a Treasury market collapse and compares the current moment to July 2007, months before the global financial crisis.