Jim Grant on the everything bubble

What people came to believe is that the Fed would be there for them.  The Fed wanted things to go up, that the Fed would make us rich.  And the if perchance, if by accident, if by some cyclical hiccup, the market pulled back, the Fed would make it go back up again...  

So fast forward to 2020, and comes the pandemic, comes the falling off the cliff in March.  And what does the Fed do?  The Fed - never mind the kitchen sink - the furnace, the plumbing, the furniture, everything in that house got tossed at the problem...  The Fed took charge of that this pandemic did not lead to a depression.  And what follows is one of the most astonishing light shows in the history of central banking.  By the time 2021 came to a close, the broadly defined money supply was showing growth year-over-year in excess of 20%, never before seen in such a short period.  Interest rates collapsed.  The speculative fervor that this created was lifting stocks, bonds, real estate... cryptos, NFTs, everything that wasn't nailed down.  Nothing was nailed down.  Massive levitation of the everything bubble, some of us called it.

What also occurred was an undesired inflation on Main Street itself, at the cash register, at the checkout counter.  So the Fed never minded the inflation at the corner of Broad and Wall Streets, New York Stock Exchange.  That was desirable because that made people spend and encouraged investment outlays and the like, but the Fed is in business to prevent and ameliorate, if it does occur, inflation at Main Street.  It wrecks wages, it wrecks budgets that distorts the values that gets elected officials defeated at the polls.  That's the kind of inflation they don't like.  But we got that, too.  

So now here we are with inflation rampant. It's not an exaggeration.  Stock prices still elevated by historical lights, bond yields still very low by historical reckoning.  So what does the Fed do?  Well, it's rather in a quandary.

~ Jim Grant, interview with William Green, 39:20 mark, August 20, 2022

Jim Grant on about imagining the future and thinking apart from the crowd

Just as markets are about the future, if you can't know the future you must contribute something to the difficult but necessary job of imagining it.  You can dogmatize about it.  You can conceive a view of it based upon the alignment of forces in the present, about the way people themselves are expecting the future to unfold.  If everyone thinks one thought, you have an edge, because you can investigate the alternative, because often as not the idea that's most popular is the least remunerative - not always, but often.

~ Jim Grant, interview with William Green, 29:20 mark, August 20, 2022

Jim Grant on how history doesn't repeat literally

Now nothing says that today is going to repeat the experience of yesteryear.  In fact, rather the odds are against that just simply because history is never so helpful as to repeat itself literally; otherwise imagine how rich the historians would be.

They say, and what they say it true, that one's first experience in markets and with money is deeply formative, imprints itself on you.  And the best investors, the nimblest and most successful, are the ones who can put that formative experience aside, or at least put it into perspective and not imagine that they must repeat the experiences of their youth in their middle years.

~ Jim Grant, interview with William Green, 19:00 mark, August 20, 2022

George Koo on economic ties between the U.S. and China

Including and working with China is potentially an all-around win-win situation.  Everybody benefits because the economies are so integrated, the skills and strengths are complementary.  But to turn it into a decoupled situation is a lose-lose situation.  I don't think China will benefit from a decoupled situation, but I can certainly say that the U.S. is also going to lose on a decoupled situation.

~ George Koo, "'Containing China' is Making America Weaker," 26:50 mark, August 27, 2022

Tom Woods on Theodore Roosevelt

Philosophically [Theodore Roosevelt] was the consummate Progressive, determined to bring efficiency and coordinated intelligence to bear against the trusts, against despoilers of the natural environment, and against international disorder.  He was, as one historian put it, "the first great president-reformer of the modern industrial era."  He therefore had little patience with federalism and indeed with most of the constitutional impediments that stood between him and the construction of a new American state.  Politically he was a committed nationalist.  He thus could barely bring himself to speak of Thomas Jefferson, whom he loathed; and as late as the 1880s he was still condemning Jefferson Davis as a traitor.  The Confederate cause, since it denied that a large consolidated nation was its own justification, enraged him.

~ Thomas Woods, "Theodore Roosevelt and the Modern Presidency," Mises.org, June 2, 2010

Doug Casey: "U.S. founders modeled the country on Rome"

U.S. founders modeled the country on Rome, all the way down to the architecture of government buildings, the use of the eagle as the national bird, the use of Latin mottos, and the unfortunate use of the fasces—the axe surrounded by rods—as a symbol of state power.  Publius, the pseudonymous author of The Federalist Papers, took his name from one of Rome’s first consuls.  As it was in Rome, military prowess is at the center of the national identity of the U.S.  When you adopt a model in earnest, you grow to resemble it.

~ Doug Casey, "The Decline and Fall of the American Empire," International Man, August 31, 2022

John Fenn on why the Chinese have Americans flummoxed

Q: What has China done to the USA for the USA to be tough with it? 

A: The Chinese have done a number of things wrong.  This has really gotten the Americans totally flummoxed. 

1. They have been wildly successful in bringing EVERYBODY out of poverty.
2. They care about EVERYBODY. All of them.
3. The will no longer kowtow to the US, nor anybody else.
4. They have developed non dollar trading mediums.
5. They have circumvented US hegemony.
6. They have developed their own allies.
7. They have pursued win win economic policy with their neighbours.
8. They have signed up half the world into the Belt and Road trading group.
9. They have stayed in their borders.
10. They are too big to attack.
11. They provide the chain of supply for the US government and military

And thanks to Felix Su :- Last but not least. They’re doing Capitalism better than the US.  That isn’t allowed.  How dare those Chinese go from Communism to Capitalism and beat the US in 50 years! 

I could go on but ALL of these things are anathema to the Ferengi.  The US hate success in others, especially when they cannot get a piece of the action.  The US prefers a zero sum game.  I win, You Lose. 

The United States regards business as WAR, to be won at all costs.  Much of this they will claim they got from a book called “The Art of War” by a Chinese scholar named Sun Tzu.  Because of the belief the Ferenghi really cannot tell the difference between a competitor and an enemy.

~ John Fenn, Quora answer, September 15, 2021