Ed Dowd has been warning about private credit for months, and the situation continues to deteriorate. Blue Owl gated investors. Apollo gated investors. BlackRock gated investors. KKR gated investors. When this many funds are telling their LPs they cannot have their money back, you are not looking at isolated incidents. You are looking at a systemic problem.
Dowd's framing is worth internalizing: the last two years of loan growth in the economy came overwhelmingly from banks loaning to private credit. And it is now seizing up. The Iran war accelerates everything but did not cause the underlying rot. Dowd sees a global recession regardless of how quickly the conflict resolves. A quick resolution gets you a relief rally followed by the same cascading credit deterioration. A prolonged conflict gets you there faster with more pain.
His $10,000 gold call by 2030 is directionally the same thesis as the bitcoin thesis. When the credit cycle turns, the government steps in. When the government steps in, the money supply expands. When the money supply expands, hard assets with no counterparty risk reprice higher. The question is not whether they print. The question is how much.