Many thanks to my old friend @steve_sedgwick & @SquawkCNBC for having me on this morning.
What did we talk about? What else but #inflation & the #Fed & the outook for next year?
This 12-tweet thread will post the slides I prepared for the show:-
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Like all crimes, #inflation needs means, motive & opportunity. Here's a lttle of the second:-
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As for means? Well...
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And here's your opportunity:-
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We should all be aware of the outcome by now:-
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As we've said, 2021 has echoes of 1946:-
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And it's a l-o-n-g way back to solid ground:-
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#bonds - doomed if they do: doomed if they don't:-
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So far, #stocks have shrugged it off. But even they won't be immune for ever:-
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#China might give #commodities a bit of a breather, but it's hard to see how engineered scarcity doesn't begin to bite again, thereafter:-
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At some point, selling the highs/buying the lows of the last year's ~sine wave range is going to fail. But, until then:-
If you’d wanted the independent thinkers, the freedom lovers, those sceptical of state action & distrustful of its corporate cronies, to reveal themselves so that they could vilified, segregated, punished -and possibly culled- you couldn’t improve on this whole #COVID19 theatre
The constant lies; the imposition of one failed measure after another; the *repetition* & reinforcement of those errors; the ever-lengthening time-scale over which they’ll be imposed; the ineffective genetech; the “Plague of the Unspiked” Big Lie -
- the looming, lifetime injections, the passes, the media witch-hunts: all carefully calculated to provoke the Tall Poppies to present their fragile stems to the neo-feudalist, techno-fascist blade being wielded by the #Davocracy’s venal -or vicious- host of societal Reapers -
We talked about - what else? - #inflation and #centralbanks and whether the #Fed & peers are 'making an historic mistake', in Steve's words.
A few charts & comments for background:-
2/It's trite to say the jump in price indices is *all* attributable to a 'basis effect' when they've accelerated so much THIS year.
3/ #JeromePowell and his merry band may wish to believe that the rise is a mere blip, but all too many businessmen & women (i.e., the people who *really* matter) seem to believe the converse is the case.
@Halsrethink Bill is however subject to the 'productivity' fallacy of interest rates. That the natural rate is low because we supposedly have nothing worth investing in and hence funnelling money into (usually poorly managed) public projects would help raise it.
@Halsrethink Contra that, there are many obvious instances of the misuse of too much too easy credit in so many fields. It also overlooks that genuine productivity gains may be limited because 'hurdle' rates have been elevated by all manner of govt interventions - hardly to be cured by more!
@Halsrethink We're in a bifurcated world where the sabotage of capital markets has (a) prevented creative destruction of zombies and (b) promoted 'destructive creation'™️ of Unicorns, as well as layering debt upon debt to strip 'cash-out' gains for PE/SPAC Ichneumon parasites
In preparation for my slot on #SquawkBox yesterday, I sent the guys a few slides as a synopsis of my last, detailed subscriber report for the discussion.
Is it possible to overkill an act of overkill? #JeromePowell & #JanetYellen seem set to let us find out.
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Not that they're alone in their folly, of course. The #ECB is outodoing them handsomely, while the #bankofengland is breaking records stretching back to its founding, 327 years ago. #centralbanks 3/x
In the 2021's first issue of #Cantillon Effects, we discussed the #inflation which now pervades our lives: not just the narrow, disputed one relating to goods prices, but the inflation of rhetoric, passions, tribalism & despotism.
Over this thread, we'll present our case:- 1/x
Replacing the "public square" with the "cyber swarm" has not been conducive to reason or civility, for all that it has opened up new possibilities of disseminating news and opinion. 2/x
The #stakeholder capitalism being built while we're confined to quarters is a world where, we're glibly assured, " you will (truly) own nothing - the #centralbank will ensure your fake asset's notional price is misleadingly high - and you'll be happy!" Really? 3/x