**** denotes well-worth reading in full at source (even if excerpted extensively here)
Economic and Market Fare:
***** Chelhot: Mr. Bessent Took Over the Printing Machine
QE is now done by the Treasury not the Fed
The Federal Reserve cut rates by 25 basis points yesterday, but the rate decision itself was irrelevant. The real message came through Powell’s press conference, where the contradictions in the Fed’s narrative became impossible to ignore. He insisted the economy continues to grow near 2 percent, that inflation is gliding back to target, and that household balance sheets remain strong. Yet at the same time he acknowledged softer labour demand and weakening consumption. What he did not admit is the critical truth: consumption is being held together purely by the wealth effect. Wages have slowed, credit growth has collapsed, and the income engine of the U.S. consumer is losing power. Powell spoke as if the structure of demand had not changed. It has.
Then came the remarkable moment. Powell stated that monetary policy cannot solve a supply problem in the housing market. He is correct. But tariffs are also negative supply shocks. And if the Fed truly believes monetary policy should not respond to supply-side inflation, then rates should already be far lower today. Powell is defending two incompatible positions, and that contradiction revealed more than all the forecasts combined. ..............
But the real event yesterday was hidden in a single line of text. The Fed will resume buying Treasury securities up to three years in maturity “for reserve-management purposes,” and critically, with no specified limit. This is not routine balance-sheet housekeeping. This is the moment the Fed admitted the system cannot function with declining reserves. Treasury bill issuance drains liquidity; the Fed must now inject it back. The central bank has effectively become the structural liquidity provider to the fiscal authority.
This is where one of our most important charts the last few weeks becomes essential. The gap between total T-bill issuance and the system’s cash basin, bank reserves plus RRP, has exploded to roughly 3.5 trillion dollars, the largest in U.S. history. The private sector does not have the liquidity to absorb issuance at this scale. To close even half of that gap, the Fed would need to buy around 2 trillion dollars of T-bills, injecting 2 trillion of fresh reserves. That liquidity flows directly into Treasury financing. Call it “reserve management” if you like. In substance, it is monetary financing of fiscal operations.
Because the Treasury controls the maturity structure of its debt, this arrangement grants it unprecedented influence over the entire yield curve. If the Treasury prefers to fund itself at 3 percent while the long end sits at 4½ percent, it can issue aggressively in the short end, slash long-term supply, execute buybacks, and rely on the Fed to offset the reserve drain with short-end purchases. The liquidity the Fed injects naturally spills into duration, pulling long-end yields down. This is a form of yield-curve control, not declared but fully operational, driven not by the central bank, but by the fiscal authority. The Fed cannot resist without detonating the repo market.
This is fiscal dominance. The Treasury leads, the Fed follows, and monetary policy becomes an instrument of funding needs. .............. Negative real rates become the equilibrium condition, financial repression by design ....................
This is why we say the printing press has changed hands. It is no longer Powell’s. It is Bessent’s or the White House’s The Treasury now effectively controls the liquidity engine of the United States. ....................
.......... This is now the global regime. Fiscal dominance is not an American quirk. It is the new international monetary order. The printing press has shifted to the Treasuries of the world, and financial repression is the equilibrium that follows.
Why Trump’s policies will power America’s financial supremacy in a multipolar era
Rumours of the U.S. dollar’s decline are as persistent as they are exaggerated. In 2025, one fact stands out: The global U.S. dollar system—“King Dollar”[1]—is not vanishing. The financial, legal, and institutional architecture that makes the dollar the world’s indispensable currency remains at the heart of global finance. It is this systemic centrality, not its day-to-day market price, that ensures “King Dollar” matters most, and it is being strategically reinforced and recalibrated for a multipolar era. After the energetic “weaponization” of the dollar under the Biden administration and U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, a prudent diversification of reserves by global central banks was always going to follow. Still, to declare the end of U.S. exceptionalism or the death of King Dollar is not just premature, it is strategically misguided. Yes, the counter trend rally in many currencies is coming to an end. Driven by fundamentals, the King Dollar revival is upon us; investors take note.
The dollar’s reserve role obliges the U.S. to run trade deficits, exporting dollars to ensure global liquidity—a dynamic known as the Triffin Dilemma[2]. This system provides stability through dollar liquidity, even as it invites concerns about rising U.S. debt and persistent deficits. Yet King Dollar’s endurance is less about direct U.S. strength or manufacturing prowess and more about the dollar’s indispensable status as the world’s settlement, liquidity, and safety anchor. When the U.S. periodically adjusts, illuminated by tariffs or incremental protectionism, it echoes British economist John Maynard Keynes’ logic at Bretton Woods: for balance in a global system both creditors and debtors must bear responsibility. The present-day pivot toward protectionism, particularly under U.S. President Donald Trump, isn’t an abandonment of leadership but a disciplined reset, enforcing the long-term health of the dollar order. The widely claimed “end” of the U.S. dollar system instead signals how early we are in the artificial intelligence (AI)- driven resurgence of American industrial capacity. ....................
................. The current arc of U.S. policy is less about rupture and more about calibrated reinvention. Implicit yield-curve control has quietly stabilized long-dated bond markets. Following the U.S. Federal Reserve’s move toward October rate cuts and ongoing U.S. Treasury purchases, the curve has flattened, with short-term bill issuance absorbing liquidity and moderating volatility. This is a result of persistent, if subtle, coordination between fiscal and monetary authorities—deliberate, quiet, and effective.
America’s advantage, then, is not raw power but institutional stamina and a willingness to accept short-term pain for longer-term renewal. Supply-side creative destruction—a centrepiece of Trumpian and centre-right economic policy—isn’t reckless but methodical, funding industrial resurgence even when headline debt stays high. A moderately softer dollar could, as after the 1985 Plaza Accord, enhance export competitiveness, catalyze infrastructure booms, and lay groundwork for generational prosperity without destabilizing the international system.
The tech-driven transformation of collateral, the rise of AI-intensive infrastructure, and the emergence of integrated fintech solutions all reinforce U.S. leadership. The 2020s look set to usher in a capital expenditures (CapEx) supercycle unparalleled since the postwar era. .....................
The three charts that signaled the recession 18 months early.
This is the Fun Part
“What makes a decision great is not that it has a great outcome. A great decision is the result of a good process, and that process must include an attempt to accurately represent our own state of knowledge. That state of knowledge, in turn, is some variation of ‘I’m not sure.’”Annie Duke, Thinking in Bets
........ The goal is to consistently place probabilistically favorable bets when the weight of the evidence lines up.
Run it Hot, Privatizing the Fed's Balance Sheet, Dollar Devaluation and the AI Boom
Key Themes, Forecasts & Risks:
- Bank deregulation and a steeper yield curve (3-month-10-year) release bank reserves and drive asset growth with significant macroeconomic and asset pricing effects.
- The FOMC reduces the policy rate to 3-3.25%, the impact on small banks and small businesses is greater than expected, both for the profitability and valuation of spread sensitive regional banks and the labor market.
- The FOMC also increases the pace of duration tightening by expanding reinvestment of mortgage paydowns into bills to a portion of maturing Treasuries.
- As a consequence of the Fed regulatory and monetary policy actions there is no need for additional balance sheet expansion, instead the privatization of the Fed’s balance sheet takes hold.
- Capital spending broadens to include non-AI infrastructure manufacturing.
- Consumption recovers as the effects of the three adverse aggregate demand shocks, tariffs, slower government spending and reduced immigration, fade and the individual tax provisions of One Triple B spur spending.
- Labor market demand and dynamism improve as Fed easing reopens the small bank credit channel and eases pressure on small floating rate borrowers. The increase in the U3 unemployment rate stalls at 4.75% in 1Q26 but doesn’t decline much due to structural pressure on employment (technology innovation adoption).
- Supply pressures return to the belly of the Treasury curve, 10s end the year at 4.5%, 2s at 3.4%, and with the policy rate at 3-3.25% the 3m10y curve crucial to regional banks ends the year above 1%.
- The privatization of the Fed’s balance sheet, bank deregulation, rate cuts and duration tightening gets into lots of market cracks. The yield curve steepens; cyclical stocks, metals, energy and industrials outperform.
- The trade weighted dollar has a similar ~8% decline led by Asian currencies as their trade surpluses stall and begin to contract. If the process stalls, a global accord is possible.
- The S&P 500 has a significant pullback in 1Q26 and ends the higher with about half the ‘25 gain.
- Credit spreads widen due to AI infrastructure debt. Fixed income supply from the Fed (DT), mortgage and credit markets, along with reduced global demand, cause a couple of real rate risk-off shocks.
..................
Run it Hot
One of the most widely expected themes for ‘26 is ‘they will run it hot’. They, in this case, refer to the Trump Administration and GOP controlled Congress. Setting aside our aversion to the assumption that ‘they’ have control over the economic outcome, as a base case we expect the effects of the three adverse aggregated demand shocks, lower immigration, slower government spending and higher tariffs, to fade. As the policies that were integral to the first second term president being elected with control over Congress since FDR morph into initiatives targeting the midterms, a modest recovery in consumer spending, stronger capex and increased labor market demand and churn are reasonably probable. Additionally, with the Fed on track to reduce the policy rate close to our estimate of neutral (a bit above 3%), the normalization of the upward sloping yield curve will reopen the small bank credit channel, and a recovery in small business employment and housing construction will contribute to stronger, more broadly distributed, growth in ‘26.
Michael Howell, founder of CrossBorder Capital and GL Indexes, warns of a lack of liquidity in financial markets. The global liquidity cycle is about to turn, which should favor commodity investments in 2026.
Liquidity is the oxygen of financial markets. When it is abundant, stock markets thrive. When it becomes scarce, turbulence increases. In recent weeks, there have been increasing signs of scarcity. Liquidity-sensitive investments such as Bitcoin have promptly suffered losses.
Few market observers understand the plumbing system of the global liquidity structure better than Michael Howell. The founder of CrossBorder Capital and GL Indexes in London specializes in analyzing liquidity flows.
These days, Howell is concerned. He says that the Federal Reserve has deliberately allowed liquidity to be withdrawn, partly because the «monetary plumbers» on the Federal Open Market Committee are in a minority. In addition, after three years of upswing, the global liquidity cycle is beginning to turn, he warns. ..............
The thesis of my two most recent books (available on the Gavekal website; great Christmas gift for your loved ones!) was that the 2018 US semiconductor embargo against China changed the world. The age of cooperation and globalization was over. Instead, the semi-embargo marked the start of the Clash of Empires. In the years that followed, China became “uninvestible” and the US became “exceptional.” This bifurcation in destinies was the most important investment trend of the period from 2018 to 2024. Anyone long the US and short China thrived. This was really the only trade to have on.
However, since early 2024, the short-China leg of this trade has clearly stopped working. Meanwhile, the long-US leg is also no longer outperforming everything in sight. So has the world changed again? I believe it has, and will try to explain the reasons for this belief in a series of upcoming papers. This paper is the first of this series, and is dedicated to US policy choices, how these have affected relative returns, and where they go from here. ......................................................
..........................
In short, looking at the prospect of US industrial policy raises more questions than it answers, including:
- Does the US have the institutional make-up to follow through on industrial policy? After all, the US does not have a Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, nor a Ministry of Science and Technology.
- Can the US afford to de-Sinify its supply chains? Or are US policymakers simply virtue-signaling around the subject?
- Is the demonization of China and the need to de-Sinify supply chains just one big excuse for a power and money grab of epic proportions? If it is, how will US policymakers deal with the consequent corruption?
- If US policymakers really are serious about de-Sinifying supply chains, will America’s elites accept the redeployment of capital into activities with lower returns on invested capital, and that in consequence the stock market will struggle and the US dollar roll over?
The answer to the last question seems most obvious: no! With US equity market capitalization now more than twice the value of US GDP, it could be argued that maintaining stable equity prices is now essential to keeping US economic growth on track (see Concerning Signals On US Growth). All of which brings us to the other option: mending fences with China. ...............
Major Markets Letter #2: Ask your parents
This week revealed a clear inflection in the macro landscape as the Fed’s latest actions pointed to the emergence of a new monetary-policy regime. The Fed’s justification for lowering the policy rate is consistent with our call that the FOMC will lean into the long-term outlook for productivity growth to implement increasingly — and perhaps unjustifiably — dovish monetary policy. This move toward an expansionary balance-sheet policy raised the possibility that Paradigm C and Paradigm D could operate simultaneously — a mix that is resoundingly bullish for risk assets.
For those new to our Paradigm framework:
Paradigm A: The 2020–21 lurching into fiscal dominance which helped catalyze the geopolitically driven supply-demand imbalance in the US Treasury bond market that is likely to persist – and widen – throughout the duration of this Fourth Turning.
History confirms that when sovereigns get too indebted – specifically when both the stock and flow of sovereign debt supply increasingly exceed available resources to capitalize the leverage – there are only three options to remedy the issue.
... Paradigm B is the cut phase of the cut → grow → print sequence required to address the geopolitically driven supply-demand imbalance in the US Treasury bond market. Cutting requires a reduction in fiscal expenditures and a reduction in trade deficits; both outcomes increase net national savings.
... Paradigm C is the grow phase of the cut → grow → print sequence required to address the geopolitically driven supply-demand imbalance in the US Treasury bond market. Growing requires the adoption of a growth-friendly policy mix featuring tax cuts, deregulation, and credit easing. The goal of the grow phase is to delever the public sector balance sheet by increasing the denominator (e.g., GDP, GDI, domestic liquidity) faster than the numerator (i.e., sovereign debt).
... Paradigm D is the print phase of the cut → grow → print sequence required to address the geopolitically driven supply-demand imbalance in the US Treasury bond market. Printing requires an erosion of central bank independence that results in the monetary authority monetizing debt – either explicitly via quantitative easing (QE) and/or yield curve control (YCC), or implicitly via reserve management operations (RMOP). The goal of the print phase is to lessen the impact of crowding out by the bloated public sector balance sheet upon the private sector. The Treasury market is atop the global capital structure, so until the US dollar is no longer the dominant reserve currency, it will always attract the capital it needs at the expense of the private sector – particularly low-to-median-income households, small businesses, and interest-rate-sensitive sectors like housing and consumer durable goods.
Apollo: Private Credit. Fact vs Fiction
Bubble Fare:
Yves here. Servaas Storm provides a fantastic broad and properly sobering view on the AI/stock market mania and the far too many reasons why US players can’t possibly deliver on their hype. ...................................................................................................................................
The Insufferable Irrationality of the AI Industry
The AI race is mostly based on the irrational fear of missing out (FOMO), in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street – which induces a herd mentality to follow ‘momentum’, a complete disregard for fundamental values in favour of placing an exaggerated importance to the limited availability of a key resource (here: Nvidia’s GPUs and ‘compute’), and overwhelming confirmation bias (the all-too-human inclination to look for information that confirms our own biased outlook). To bring home the point: the use of ChatGPT has been found to decrease idea diversity in brainstorming, as per an article in Nature.
It is deeply ironic that the industry that is supposed to build ‘super-intelligence’, a deeply flawed concept with rather sinister origins (see Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna 2025), is itself deeply irrational. But solid anthropological evidence on the local tribes living in Silicon Valley and working on Wall Street shows that this irrationality is hardwired into the perma-adolescent psyches of the inhabitants, who are wont to talk to each other about the coming AIpocalypse, almost religiously believe in AI prophecies, have deep faith in their algorithms, regard AI as a superior ‘sentient being’ in need of legal representation, enthusiastically engage in techno-eschatology, and, above all, are deeply fond of Hobbits and the LOTR. ...............................
The Revenue Delusion
There is no world in which the enormous spending in data centre infrastructure (more than $5 trillion in the next five years) is going to pay off; the AI-revenue projections are pie-in-the-sky because of the following: ..................................................
Conclusion
Because of these four reasons, AI’s ‘scaling’ strategy will fail and the AI data-centre investment bubble will pop. The unavoidable AI-data-centre crash in the U.S. will be painful to the economy, even if some useful technology and infrastructure will survive and be productive in the longer run. However, given the unrestricted greed of the platform and other Big Tech corporations, this will also mean that AI tools that weaken the labour conditions — in activities including the visual arts, education, health care and the media — will survive. Similarly, generative AI is already entrenched in militaries and intelligence agencies and will, for sure, get used for surveillance and corporate control. All the big promises of the AI industry will fade, but many harmful uses of the technology will stick around.
The immediate economic harm done will look rather insignificant compared to the long-term damage of the AI mania. The continuous oversupply of AI slop, LLM fabricated hallucinations, clickbait fake news and propaganda, deliberate deepfake images and endless machine-made junk, all produced under capitalism’s banner of progress and greed, consuming loads of energy and spouting tonnes of carbon emissions will further undermine and self-poison the trust in and the foundations of America’s economic and social order. The massive direct and indirect costs of generic LLMs will outweigh the rather limited benefits, by far.
Part 1: On the coming geopolitics of the compute stack, or Our New Imperial Strategy
On the political economy of the Cloud and AI
As near as one can tell, the business rationale for AI rests on the hope that it will substitute for human judgment and discretion. Given the role of big data in training AI systems, and the enormous concentrations of capital they require to develop, the AI revolution will extend the logic of oligopoly into cognition. What appears to be at stake, ultimately, is ownership of the means of thinking. This will have implications for class structure, for the legitimacy of institutions that claim authority based on expertise, and for the credentialing function of universities.
Consider some recent developments that don’t pertain to AI per se, but show the power that comes with ownership of computational infrastructure.
When Amazon Web Services went dark in October of this year, thousands of institutions were paralyzed for a few hours. Banks went offline; hospitals were unable to access medical records. Platforms that people rely on to communicate, such as Signal, also became nonresponsive. The cloud hosts an increasing share of the services that make a society run, routing them through a small number of firms. Our own government is also dependent on this infrastructure, and therefore dependent on the continued solvency of a handful of business enterprises. The phrase “too big to fail” hardly begins to capture the situation. .............
Big Tech is spending billions on data centres in the US to fuel the development of artificial intelligence. But those grand plans face a problem: access to power.
Marcus: A sad day for America
Trump goes all in on Silicon Valley, leaving US citizens, and even his own party behind.
Moments ago, despite enormous opposition from both parties, President Trump signed an Executive Order that is designed to block states from regulating AI; since the federal government has passed almost no laws regulating AI, this essentially leaves AI unregulated in America. .............
Charts:
1:
...The NASDAQ Composite has been above its 100 day moving average for 150 straight days.
— Subu Trade (@SubuTrade) December 13, 2025
Historically, $SPX was higher 12/13 times 6 months later, and 100% of the time 1 year later
• Average gain: +14.8%
• Average max drawdown: −3.6% pic.twitter.com/Dk71DVQGiW
The S&P 500 is now still 37% below the +2σ line, which has marked every market top for two centuries.
— ◢ (@joemccann) December 11, 2025
Higher. pic.twitter.com/D9gOOV40D8
(not just) for the ESG crowd:
The 2025 state of the climate report: a planet on the brink
We are hurtling toward climate chaos. The planet's vital signs are flashing red. The consequences of human-driven alterations of the climate are no longer future threats but are here now. This unfolding emergency stems from failed foresight, political inaction, unsustainable economic systems, and misinformation. Almost every corner of the biosphere is reeling from intensifying heat, storms, floods, droughts, or fires. The window to prevent the worst outcomes is rapidly closing. .......................
We are hurtling toward climate chaos. The planet's vital signs are flashing red. The consequences of human-driven alterations of the climate are no longer future threats but are here now. This unfolding emergency stems from failed foresight, political inaction, unsustainable economic systems, and misinformation. Almost every corner of the biosphere is reeling from intensifying heat, storms, floods, droughts, or fires. The window to prevent the worst outcomes is rapidly closing. .......................
There is much more warming in the pipeline than simple models suggest.
— Leon Simons 🌍 (@LeonSimons8) December 13, 2025
Especially regionally.
Observations trump simple models.
Global averaging of (outdated CMIP6) models is pretty much useless with regards to what most people care about:
understanding real world impacts. https://t.co/EDc2yuLPs5 pic.twitter.com/EhK37I2yaN
Sci Fare:
.......... What’s not rare however, is immune system damage from this virus, if you’re willing to believe the studies that are being done.
The strange unusually large waves of respiratory illness we see every year now that keep getting worse every year are caused by SARS2 vaccination and the virus itself. The studies now suggest that SARS2 vaccination itself plays a role in the problem. ..................
U.S. B.S.:
The regime's project is to destroy all alternative visions of the future.
This is unlikely to end well for all parties concerned, including the US.
It’s been a busy week for the Empire of Lies and Chaos, especially in its direct neighbourhood. The illegal seizure of an Iranian oil tanker carrying Venezuelan oil on Wednesday was a reminder of what the US’ illegal war of aggression is really about: Venezuela’s oil deposits, which represent almost one-fifth of the world’s known reserves.
........ There are, of course, other reasons, including Venezuela’s large deposits of gas, gold, rare earths and freshwater. Venezuela’s close ties with Russia, China and Iran, from where the tanker originally came, and Cuba, to where the tanker was heading, are also a key factor.
There are the Military Industrial Complex’s needs to keep in mind. With the Trump administration drawing down US commitments to project Ukraine, another war must be started in order to keep the Pentagon’s money laundromat working at full speed ..........
Just as the United States hits its first official trillion-dollar annual military budget, the New York Times editorial board has published an article which argues that the US is going to need to increase military funding to prepare for a major war with China.
The article is titled “Overmatched: Why the U.S. Military Must Reinvent Itself,” and to be clear it is an editorial, not an op-ed, meaning it represents the position of the newspaper itself rather than solely that of the authors.
This will come as no surprise to anyone who knows that The New York Times has supported every American war throughout its entire history, because The New York Times is a war propaganda firm disguised as a news outlet. .........
The narrative that the US war machine has “defended the free world” during its period of post-world war global dominance is itself insane empire propaganda. ....................
................. But that’s the New York Times for you. It’s been run by the same family since the late 1800s and it’s been advancing the information interests of rich and powerful imperialists ever since. It’s a militarist smut rag that somehow found its way into unearned respectability, and it deserves to be treated as such. The sooner it ceases to exist, the better.
Geopolitical Fare:
Lawrence: “Oil and ideology.”
Is the flotilla off Venezuela’s coast bluff or a prelude to invasion? And either way, what is behind it?
Roughly a quarter of the U.S. Navy’s fleet now floats in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela, including the U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford, the largest aircraft carrier in American history. Alongside the Ford, numerous destroyers, amphibious vessels, and submarines are also patrolling just outside Venezuela’s territorial waters. In the air, the Pentagon has deployed F–35 jets, heavy bombers, MQ–9 Reaper drones (large, long-range, lethal), and some 15,000 uniformed personnel. This is America’s largest deployment in the Caribbean since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. In mid–October Trump acknowledged that he has authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct covert operations in Venezuela and that he may order ground troops to invade the country.
What is the plan? Let us reason this through. ...........
Chelhot: Mr. Maduro, You Are Next
The Battle for Heavy Crude Supremacy has Begun
The United States forged its post-war alliances in the Middle East on a simple bargain: price your oil in dollars, and we guarantee the regions political regimes’ security. In return, the major producers not only adopted the dollar for their oil exports but also pegged their currencies to it, ensuring that the dollars earned through energy sales were recycled into U.S. financial assets. In practice, this meant these states surrendered their monetary and fiscal independence. By tying their currencies and their security to Washington, they became, whether acknowledged or not, vassal states within the American financial system.
This also explains why, despite being formal leaders of OPEC, these states remain structurally aligned with U.S. geopolitical priorities. Their monetary anchors, security frameworks, and external balances force them into compliance. And history shows that any OPEC member attempting to rewrite the rules of the dollar-oil order eventually pays a heavy price. Iraq in 1991, Libya before the 2011 uprising, and now Venezuela, all sought to deviate from the dollar-centric system, and all were forced back into subordination. The message has always been clear: challenging the monetary architecture of oil pricing is not tolerated. .................
Dollar privilege: everyone using the dollar for trade, and the US controlling the system that moves currency around the world is important. When it goes away, and it will in the next five years, I’d guess, the US will take a huge hit to its ability to command the world’s resources and will lose most of its ability to sanction anyone outside the US vassaldom area. (And the vassals will find it easier to leave if they choose.)
But to see the loss of dollar privilege as primary is a huge mistake. It’s downstream from the only thing that really matters: actual national capacity.
Industrial output, tech, secure resource availability (people, food, energy, rare earths, oil, uranium, etc.)
Fundamentally everything flows from having the most industry and the tech lead, combined with enough resources to make use of that industry and tech lead. Dollar privilege happened because after WWII the US controlled over 50% of the world’s manufacturing ability and was the most powerful non-Soviet state in the world. .............................
To return to our initial point, dollar privilege is a lagging indicator. You get currency domination after you’ve already won, and you lose it after you’ve lost. .................
This is another “last days of the American Empire” thing, and thank God. Dollar privilege has been used, literally, to kill many millions of people thru the world, and to impoverish hundreds of millions. It will be a great day for every non-American when it ends.
Zeitgeist Fare:
Why the kids have stopped listening
.............................. Before you even get to the cultural battles, we need to start with the basics, young people today are disadvantaged in ways Boomers never were.
Housing? Impossible.
Wages? Can I even get a job?
Debt? Everywhere.
Public services? Collapsing.
We had hope.
We sold their hope to not have recessions.
Let’s call it for what it is, politicians trading lies for votes and paying for it with debt (their future).
What did that do?
It took away the opportunity of owning a home, having kids and retiring. We told them work hard at school, get a degree and the world is yours. They followed the rules and now they’re working for Starbucks saddled with debt.
If you grew up believing everything was getting better, you behave one way.
If you grow up watching everything fall apart, you behave another.
This is the foundations of the nihilism. It’s not “online radicalisation.” It’s not “bad parenting.” It’s just a generation looking at the economy and realising the lift doesn’t go up for them. ................
Other Fare:
