Tim Duy

Warsh: "In six weeks we have caused, I think, a sea change in new thinking."

Fed governor Chris Waller says a rate hike should be on the table if this week's inflation data come in hot, his clearest signal yet he could back a July move. He lays out what he says is a “credible case” to hold steady if inflation cooperates but pairs it with this warning about talking tough without acting: "Sternly staring at inflation until it melts before our withering gaze is not an option.”

Ten years ago you could make jokes about Jane Eyre and Dracula on twitter and most people would get them; nowadays I have to explain references to Alice in Wonderland and The Hobbit as if we’re living in a very on-the-nose film adaptation of Fahrenheit 451.

The thing I find interesting about these charts *now* is every month that passes we get more powerful models, more token consumption, more familiarity with how to use these tools, and yet white collar employment trends look better now than they did a year ago.

FREEDOM FUEL HAS ARRIVED. ⛽️🇺🇸 The FIRST Freedom Fuel Network gas station has LANDED in Philadelphia, lowering the price at the pump to $3.47 for our 47th President. President Trump is leading the charge to lower gas prices this summer - putting more money in your pocket. 🔥

2014-2019 was price stability.

A running theme of this feed has been that the callousness and gaudy vulgarity of the Trump administration, along with the fecklessness of the Fed, will provoke a socialist backlash that reshapes the country over the next decade. I am more convinced of that now than ever.

Economists have done such a poor job explaining free-market capitalism that we're now re-litigating it with a generation taught socialism is preferable. It's like the medical profession having to convince people bloodletting isn't good medicine and to stop asking for leeches

While I admire Powell, I wouldn’t credit his detailed narration of the Fed’s reaction function with particular foresight. It was, above all, an exercise in the name of transparency. The policy steps taken on his watch were largely textbook rather than innovative; a framework that markets now parse with far greater sophistication. We are entering a period in which textbook central banking may no longer be held in high regard. This helps explain the growing focus on alternative data, which can provide cover for deviating from, or at least softening, the standard script. Market participants may note that the data “normally” call for a hike, only for the Fed to counter: “Yet look at these alternative indicators; they say otherwise!”

When I was a child, my grandfather would sometimes solemnly intone at the dinner table: "The purpose of socialism is to organize scarcity." As a kid it sort-of didn't register in my brain as meaning anything beyond "socialism bad", but eventually when I was 12 or something, I did ask what he meant by those specific words. And he said: socialists establish control of valuable resources and then create an artificial scarcity of these resources, so that they can then use them as a tool of control by deciding who gets and doesn't get those resources. And I thought that was wrong. I mean, are socialists misguided? Sure. But to claim that they deliberately create scarcity as a means of political control? That seemed far-fetched. But, of course, he was entirely correct.

Everyone is obsessed with the record low consumer sentiment in the University of Michigan survey. But the Conference Board's similar survey finds that Americans are largely positive about the economy. Maybe the "vibecession" just isn't real.