Fed screwed up by not letting inflation run "Higher 4 Longer" in 2022 to get debt/GDP back to 70-80% before hiking, b/c rate hikes on debt/GDP of 120% eventually start adding to inflation👇

1/ 🧵...

https://twitter.com/EpsilonTheory/status/1767531098655858731

2/ To stop inflation at this point, the Fed would need to cut rates to 0% & balance the Federal budget, which would trigger a 7% of GDP decline.

This would be a bigger GDP drop than the GFC, except with no bailouts for anyone this time...just stand aside & watch it burn.

This ceases to be an intellectual exercise once you realize:

a) US min. wage was 5 silver quarters ($1.25) in 1963

b) Those 5 silver qtrs are worth $25 now

c) US CPI calculations say that $1.25 is only worth $10.81 now

d) The $14.19 difference☝️has gone to the US top 10%

e) Labor share of corporate profits is near multi-decade lows

f) US political dysfunction is at multi-generational highs, driven in no small part by the highest income inequality in nearly 100 years.

h/t @truflation 2/ This is why I always crack up when people say "Gold isn't used for anything productive", or more recently, "BTC isn't used for anything."

They're used to prevent the state from stealing your finite time, your finite lifetime, from you.

"For 10+ years...Ivy League economists, former US secretaries of treasury, transportation, & labor, Congress...argued US factories were 2x as efficient today as they were 3 decades ago..."

"It turns out that Trump was much closer to being right than Wash DC, NYC, & Cambridge" 1/ 2/ US policymakers could have cross-checked their analysis that it was all "automation" by watching inbound container volumes at US ports, but chose to ignore the inconvenient message (to "free trade" dogma) contained in record inbound container volumes.
qz.com/1269172/the-ep…

Foreigners that owe USD debt cannot print USDs...

...but foreigners do have a $50T (gross; $18T net) "USD piggybank" they can tap to acquire needed USDs any time the USD gets "too strong."

This is why the UST market keeps "dysfunctioning" every time the USD gets "too strong."
2/ This is what the "Let's weaponize a stronger USD!" advocates continue to miss.

You can only "weaponize a stronger USD" if doing so does not threaten to blow up the UST market, which requires low debt/GDP & low deficits/GDP...& the US has neither low debt nor low deficits.

Another symptom of "US Dollar Dutch Disease"

As the "Saudi Arabia of money" (link), we can easily produce more USDs, but if you need manufactured goods in large quantities, we can't help you.

"USD Dutch Disease" has become a threat to US defense readiness.👇

https://twitter.com/DeItaone/status/1711402928672506356

2/ The cure to "USD Dutch Disease" is simple, but not politically easy:

Replace USTs as the global primary reserve asset with a neutral reserve asset that floats in all currencies (ie, gold, or maybe someday, BTC.)

This would require the Fed to buy up much of the UST market.

This chart shows the moment markets began discounting that Fed rate hikes would quickly push the US into fiscal dominance. The market's view was effectively confirmed by:

a) March 2023 US banking strains, &

b) the Fed's response to those banking strains.

Via @BobEUnlimited 2/ For this divergence to close, Fed needed only to stand aside & let unsecured depositors at SVB, etc. lose 100% of their unsecured deposits, & then continue to stand aside thru the ensuing bank run, equity mkt sell-off, & severe global recession that likely would've followed.

1/ US investors: "JPM is likely to be the biggest winner in banking turmoil."

12/1/22: JPM becomes 2nd GLD custodian 18 years after GLD was launched

12/5/22: GLD to use non-UK vaults for 1st time

1/12/23: JPM reportedly moves into gold clearing in Zurich

US investors: 🦗🦗🦗 2/

12/1/22: bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

"...what matters is not the currency in which Brazilian trade is denominated...What matters are the assets in which exporters want to accumulate the proceeds of their exports." -Michael Pettis

EXACTLY! Now, consider this chart below & then Google "Brazil Central Bank buys gold"

https://twitter.com/michaelxpettis/status/1646571061461520385

2/ Many arguing that "de-dollarization isn't happening" employ a strawman argument like:

"CNY is not freely convertible", or

"China's capital account isn't open", or

"China won't run deficits to generate the debt".

These arguments miss what is happening in plain sight.

Compare $-value of Russian oil & gas prod'n to $-value of global gold prod'n for a potential reason gold has diverged from real rates

"In an annual report, the Russian CB said it had been accelerating investments in assets that cannot be blocked by states it calls “unfriendly." 2/ Everyone has been so focused on trading gold on real rates that (almost) all of them forgot gold also trades with energy (but not @JoshCrumb!)

The physical oil market alone is ~10-15x the global gold market in annual, USD production terms.

1/ "If you look at all of the personal income tax returns that were filed in California in the year 2020, just 1% of the total number of income tax returns that were filed were responsible for more than 49% of all of the personal income tax that was paid in that year." 2/ "And unlike most of us who get our income from wages and salaries, that very narrow band of taxpayers derives a lot of their income from things like capital gains, stock markets [and] bonuses that are tied to corporate or stock performance."