Normal Interest Rates: What The Debt Panic Gets Wrong
A 5% long bond isn’t the crisis, it’s the receipt, and the fifteen years when money was free did far more damage to growth than normal interest rates ever will. This past week, two charts crossed my desk, arguing the […]
Yen Intervention Narrative: What’s True And Not
Japan didn’t just spark a currency crisis; it reminded everyone that the Fed has quietly backstopped the dollar for 60 years. The Yen intervention is not new, and while the “end of fiat, buy gold” crowd is right about the […]
Sound Money: Be Careful What You Wish For
A return to sound money has become the rallying cry for a growing crowd of investors, politicians, and commentators who are, understandably, fed up. Fed up with deficits that never shrink, with a national debt north of $39 trillion, with […]
AI Bear Case: What Skeptics Get Right And Wrong
The AI “bear case” isn’t one argument; it’s three. Burry on earnings. Bernstein on circular financing. MIT on revenue. Two are half right. One falls apart on the data. Michael Burry broke a two-year silence on November 11 to accuse […]
AI Capex Depreciation Risk Is The Catch To Record Earnings
The second-quarter earnings season is in full swing. So far, the results are landing in line or better than the upwardly revised Wall Street estimates. That's the opposite of how this usually works. Analysts normally trim their forecasts as a year wears on. In 2026, they've done the opposite.
Home Affordability: Better Than Headlines Suggest
Let's start with a recent survey. Two out of three Americans now say it's a bad time to buy a house, the most negative reading Gallup has ever recorded.1 Another study showed that a record 25.2 million adults under 35 are living with their parents.
AI Capex Risk Cuts Both Ways In The American Economy
Just over a year ago, I made the case that the deficit narrative would find its cure in artificial intelligence. Goldman Sachs has since published research that, on first reading, appears to refute. It isn't. But after more than thirty years of watching capex cycles play out, I've learned the right move when new data lands is to test the original argument against it.
Wage Growth As A Leading Inflation Indicator
Headline CPI just printed 4.2% year-over-year for May. The highest reading since April 2023. The 10-year Treasury punched above 4.6% on the back of it, then pulled back recently. Energy ran +23.5% over the past twelve months on the Iran war, accounting for roughly 60% of the monthly all-items gain, and the doom crowd keeps pushing this is 1979 all over again with rate hikes ahead,
Friedman Was Right, Just Mostly Misquoted.
Milton Friedman's famous one-liner that anchors half the inflation debates on financial television leaves out the part where the actual economics live. Once you put it back in, the doomist case gets a lot smaller.