Humble Beast

I would think so. Our inflation is lower and we have 24-7 electricity/heat.

I’m the wrong person to ask. 😝 TBH the action feels pretty similar to end of 2018. Low volatility at new bottom of 6k. Then had one more big whoosh down. Seems obvious like that could come since Fed is intent on dumping everything further. Of course if it’s so obvious does it really happen? How many sellers are really left? We’ll see. CBDCs are a central planner’s wet dream. Complete surveillance. Unlimited societal manipulation possible. Negative interest rates easily imposed. Want expiration date for tokens programmed to force consumption? No problem. They will try to move to these. Not sure what to make of swift messing with other blockchains. I guess if they could upgrade their performance while maintaining control of their current role they would do it.

A lot to digest here

Seems noteworthy that bitcoin held steady today with the S&P dumping to new 52 week lows. Not sure what it means, but it’s a divergence.

And today they announced the anticipated price tag for energy price cap. 200B Euros. Printing money to buy energy with inflation already in double digits. Good luck.

Germany update But with government subsidies there’s no brake on consumption.

Druckenmiller was calling out Fed mistakes last year. Also, on debt and entitlements

It was smart of Putin to gain a large share of European gas market. He was always going to use it like this. He’s botched pretty much everything since and now he’s going to try to take us down with him. It’s all so tiresome. The impact of this is to supply for the next several years. My understanding is new LNG ports take 3-5 years to build so new capacity isn’t coming online soon. New Russian leader or resolved conflict could’ve allowed gas to flow as a bridge until that capacity is available. Refilling storage the next few years will be more difficult as well. You have to think beyond the obvious. There’s downstream effects that have been discussed here plenty. European/German deindustrialization with all the societal issues that come with it. Fertilizer production is dependent on NG. Higher costs mean less fertilizer, means lower crop yields. Increased food scarcity. Especially in developing nations that can less afford the new high prices. Higher energy costs put upward pressure on inflation globally. We’ve seen the effects of high energy costs on seemingly strong nations with their currencies. Pound, Euro, Yen, Yuan all rekt and still worsening. The complete fallout from this is still unknown.

This has been been building for a long time. Sad part is that the West laid our own trap. Putin sprung it. Now we’re all fucked.

Seeing reports that the damage to Nordstream 1 and 2 is essentially irreparable. That gap between LNG supply and demand for next 5 years is pretty shocking. Have to think fertilizer/food shortages will be persistent problem during that period. Sad.

Ultimately every nation will do what they think benefits them. The tax cuts were probably overdoing it, but a lot of their spending is energy bailouts. Strong dollar + energy shortage in a given nation = currency debasement Same thing for Euro and Yen. Shortages are not abating any time soon, so the only reprieve will be Fed pivot.

I hadn’t thought of pensions being the reason for a forced pivot, but it looks like they were the culprit in UK. Thus, QE returns with 10% inflation there.

The Bank of England pivots. “Temporarily” reinstates QE.

Does she mean Dr Andrews? That’s the only doctor I could think that people would mention by name, especially in Alabama.

Well I guess noted Kremlin agent/Russian bot Peter Zeihan should be embarrassed because that’s where I first saw that account shared yesterday. 🤷🏻‍♂️

What are the chances we get a formal accusation?

Man this sucks. I can’t imagine living in such a hopeless place. We are incredibly lucky.