the Biden team that is diddling the supply chain. It’s judged baby formula of such strategic importance that it’s rolled out the Defense Production Act to force US companies to make more of it
Blind Trust
Wheat prices shot up 6% yesterday after India decided to keep its bread at home. Ever since Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, it’s been common knowledge that trade makes us all better off. Otherwise, we don’t get the benefits of specialisation and comparative advantage. But our hypothesis here at the Letter is that […]
The Fed’s Asylum
We now suffer the highest inflation rate in 40 years. And the public despises it. It’s a ‘tax’ but a particularly painful and insidious one
Death at the Margin
How many people will die because of the Fed’s efforts to ‘save lives’ during the COVID Panic? Trigger warning: we are coming dangerously close to earnest indignation.
A Nightmare Scenario
Atrocities are punished in the private sector. That’s what bear markets are for. In the public sector, they’re more often rewarded.
When Luna Met Terra
‘When the money goes, everything goes’ is a dictum here at the Letter. And one of the first things that went when the Fed began diddling the economy was common sense.
Pilot Error
There are some 400 PhD economists on the Fed payroll. Did any of them foresee the obvious consequences of printing up trillions of dollars’ worth of new money? Apparently not.
A Harder Landing
The stock market had another anxious day yesterday. Stocks started falling in Tokyo, headed down in Europe, and continued the pattern around the globe, ending in the US with a 653-point loss for the Dow Jone
Rich Man, Poor Man
The remarkable slowdown of the US economy comes after the Fed pumped up its balance sheet by US$8 trillion since 1999…and then increased the money supply by 50%
Ace Pilot Powell
Consumer prices are rising. Real wages are falling. Investors are panicking. Productivity is dropping. The trade deficit is getting worse. Mortgages and car payments are rising.
