Short and sweet today, but I hope it was of some interest. The notes I put together ahead of time will follow in this thread...
1/x
First of all, it's #ValentinesDay and SOMEONE is going to get massacred today when the #CPI is released, so naturally:-
2/x
Roses are red, violets are blue,
JayPow doesn't know
And neither do you.
#inflation's effects are not as universal as they were, but does that mean we can all now relax?
3/x
The #jobs market, meanwhile, is still smokin' hot (at least, it is if that last #NFP print is to be believed). Certainly not enough signs of distress to derail the #Fed's loudly declared intent.
4/x
Not hard to find signs of weakness but also (partial explanations) and offsets. Falling #energy prices cast a long shadow on some of the macro numbers.
Ironically, in a world supposedly plagued by weakening industry and where finance is both dearer and more pickily extended, those at the higher, capital intensive end of the productive chain are breaking a lot more ground than those at the lower.
Adding to the confusion, we are potentially suffering from some serious misapprehensions about just how tight are money & #credit. In these circumstances, the widely-noted lack of #moneysupply growth may well be deceptive.
7/x
Furthermore, we may have come up a long way from the bottom in fairly short order, but its still too early to say we're risking the bends, much less altitude sickness, when it comes to real #yields
8/x
Heads or Tails? Kopf oder Zahl?
Both market & #FOMC have managed to talk themselves into a corner regarding today's #CPI release. What we REALLY need for direction is a brief rally/sell-off on a weak/strong number which gets instantly rejected & sucks in volume on the move 9/x
The wider import is that such reversals -of policy, positioning, of data and direction- may be here to stay. #Multiflation, we call it and it's a doozy! 10/x
Larger divergences from expectations. Wider ranges of outcomes. Lesser predictability. Shortened horizons (and hence higher natural rates). Time to get the flared jeans and the Adidas T-shirts out of the wardrobe & start doing the Tiger Feet dance.
11/x
Oh, and 60/40 RIP. Risk parity, too, probably - a well as a host of other mechanical correlation strategies.
It's a world of rigorous Auftragstaktik up at the sharp end, not Chateau generalship and sandbox Schlieffen Plans.
Agreed. The singular advantage of money as a near-universally acceptable, reliable medium of exchange is that it breaks the need to know and trust counterparts all along the chain of trade & production. 1/x
This not only expands -and hence enriches- the network of exchange (think Adam Smith or “I, Pencil”) but removes node-occupying middlemen and toll-exactors. Efficiency increases, but transparency and fairness, too. 2/x
Once we have #CBDC-s -coupled to #Agenda2030#IoT tracking of ‘#carbon’, meat protein, ‘circular economy’, low food miles, etc, we will have subjected ourselves to an intrusive, permanent rationing where a tax collector, a camp guard, and a Levitican Inquisitor...
3/x
I did TRY to find something positive to say - honest, folks!
Following are the notes I sent the team before the show:-
🧵1/x
Ok. So here goes...
2/x
Something I've mentioned on here: the enormous scale of Europe's energy problem runs into the €trillions. The #AmpelDesGrauens "Doppel-Wums" -'bazooka' - relief package is €200bln & doubts are *already* being voiced whether will suffice. 3/x
Sadly, the delusion that government is a choir of seraphim, all celestial virtue & superhuman foresight is hard to dispel; not least since ALL parties exploit this, all teachers are themselves trained to it.
Now just imagine the whole country run by London’s train driver unions!
Most here will have no memory of the 70s -the never-ending stoppages, strikes & flying pickets; the ‘closed shop’, restrictive practices, collective bargaining, ‘beer & sandwiches’ deal-making. The poor service, culminating in the unburied dead, the garbage-filled streets...
The stop-go inflation, the sheer moral -and often financial-corruption of the shop stewards - greater and more immediate oppressors and intimidators of the real workers than were any ‘fat-cat capitalist’ boss...
The world today🧵
The US is a bankrupt liberal arts college being run into the ground by sophomore, social studies snowflakes while the frat boys have broken into the arms locker and are shooting up the neighboutrhood, The Dean, meanwhile, can't remember where he put his glasses.
Europe: a weird mix of eager Bonapartism & a Judaean suicide cult from the 'Life of Brian'.
Worsula Fonda-Lyin' as Agrippina: Verhofstadt as Saint Just.
Gutting its own economy but now presuming to re-order the Pacific as well as poking the Bear on its (ever-expanding) borders
China: Seemingly gripped with #ZeroCovid insanity but with what hidden motives? A way of disguising credit bubble implosion? #Xi's battle with #Jiang's #Shanghai Gang? A hybrid war ploy to weaken a West lining it up in the crosshairs, post-#Putin?
For all the blithe talk about #EnergyTransition, the blunt truth is that civilisation runs on hydrocarbons. Remove the latter and the former falls, too.
2/n
Even the food we eat requires them. We have not improved the living standards of all our teeming billions on the quasi-Neolithic methods of farming so beloved of the ignorant #Green metromarxists.
All you pointy-head PhD types and other academics now issuing mea culpas for ‘not understanding’ the #inflation dynamic: we warned you from the very off that more $$ + less supply + capital destruction/impairment would only NOT lead there if the QE/fiscal flood ...
1/5
..held perforce partly in abeyance, were later, upon cessation of ‘house arrest’, used to pay down debt & so self-extinguish itself.
If that unlikelihood did NOT eventuate - if Hyper-#QE were not terminated/reversed -how was the present bleak situation NOT to be foreseen??
2/5
As for the belated recognition that the disease has now metastasized to a wide range of raw inputs & production goods -increasingly to now-operative services as well as classic #inflation outlets- we were emphasising this well over a year ago while you were all “#transitory”
3/5