Is your box still backed up in port? How much does the onward haulage cost? What happens to #freight rates after #LNY/#Beijing2022?
2/14
The bet is that #energy cannot *possibly* rise as far and fast this year as last, but what about all the other inputs? To what extent are these and other costs yet to be passed on?
US Households have acquired perhaps $3.5 trillion in extra money this past two years, roughly equivalent to the weekly wage of 1/4 of the workforce. It's gotta go *somewhere*!
The #Fed is so far behind the curve that a plane-wreck seems inevitable, yet the market still only wants to contemplate a 2-2 1/4% peak in the #Funds rate, similar to that of 2018/19.
5/14
The same witches' brew confronts many of the #Fed's peers. The inordinate laxity of the past two years, compounding the errors accumulated since Lehman collapsed, is rapidly turning hubris to Nemesis.
No wonder, then, that #stocks are starting to look shaky. Everyone's aboard the same unsinkable ship; #hedgefund hotels are full to capacity' valuations are, in many cases, extreme.
Time for a classic February reversal/rout?
9/14
Everyone's sweetheart could easily turn into the vengeful ex who cuts up your suits, then gets the keys both to the McMansion *and* the car in the drive.
All of which means that the latest round in the battle between Electrons and Protons-Neutrons has clearly been won by the latter. Break this support and another lurch down is in prospect. #commodities#Tech#FAANG#GSCI
11/14
#TBonds meanwhile have any number of juicy targets for resurrected #Bond market vigilantes to shoot for.
Just try not to get too badly wounded in the inevitable short squeezes as the larger movement progresses.
Alternatively, ask how the vast monetary overhang, created over the past two years, is going to be dissipated.
If not frozen in place as savings, or used to pay down debt, or miraculously promoting new production, it will continue to raise prices until its real value levels out.
Unspoken in that last is the added complication that the rising tide will NOT lift all boats at once. Cantillon effects will create undeserving winners. Relative price distortions will misdirect capital & effort. Secondary credit booms(& busts) will be seeded.
Additionally, policy responses will typically aggravate the disease. Taxes, subsidies, price caps, rationing - all are likely PLUS a fisc so readily backstopped by the CB will plug budget gaps with MORE money creation & also try to buy off unemployment waves. Vicious circle time.
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:-
1/x
Like all crimes, #inflation needs means, motive & opportunity. Here's a lttle of the second:-
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