The AI Bubble Is Being Funded With Fake Money | ZFS 97

Send us Fan MailEverybody is talking about whether AI is a bubble. Almost nobody is talking about how it is actually being paid for, and that is the part that should scare you. Sean, Joe and I follow the money all the way down.I walk through the four ways the hyperscalers like Meta, Google, Oracle, and Nvidia are funding this AI buildout. First capital expenditure, which jumped from 18 billion a quarter in 2019 to 130 billion a quarter today. Then domestic corporate bonds, which exploded from 20 billion in all of 2024 to 178 billion just eight months into 2026. Then international bonds sold off in euros, francs, and yen because there are literally not enough dollars to cover it. And finally the special purpose vehicle, the shell company shell game that lets Meta build a 30 billion dollar data center in Louisiana under a company called Beignet while keeping 80% of the debt off their own books through firms like Blue Owl, Blackstone, and Apollo.Here is the part that matters. When you sell off the debt, the risk moves to whoever holds the bond. That is pension funds, retail investors, everyday people. The billionaires keep the upside and hand you the downside, exactly like 2008. In 2007 Ben Bernanke said the subprime problem was contained. This year the IMF used almost the identical word about private credit and AI. Contained. We have heard this song before.I also get into why this is capitalism working as designed, why the China argument is being used to justify all of it, and why I think this ends in more money printing, more hyperinflation, and another transfer of assets to the people who already own everything.Support the show