Jim Haggerty

@christankerfund Iran conflict mellowing selloff...a deal will slow their role...need Goldman to come out with the results of their strategic assessment

$GLNG -6%

@POLITICOEurope And the USA would respond by pushing German car companies out of the USA market. Not sure that helps either side though. Meanwhile the Chinese continue to move up the manufacturing value chain and are slowly (or quickly) eroding a key strength of the EU export economy

The EU should try to push the U.S. tech companies out of the market, Finnish MEP Aura Salla said. "American companies think we are fools — giving them all our data for free and then buying their services." #POLITICOAITech

@wesbury The independence charade was made plan for all to see when Yellen walked out of the Fed and a few years later walked in Biden's Treasury Dept. The idea that these folks are unbiased arbiters of economic health is fantasy and always was...Bernanke was no better

My piece on Fed Independence and Jerome Powell…Cry Me A River…Real Clear Politics Jerome Powell and So-Called 'Fed Independence' realclearpolitics.com/articles/2026/…

@ewertoncostapt @DrJStrategy You mean like Yellen walking out of the Fed and into Biden's Treasury...that independence convention was broken a long long time ago

@DrJStrategy The legal point is valid Fed independence is a convention, not an absolute constitutional guarantee. The real question is whether eroding that convention has costs that only show up years later in inflation credibility and bond market trust.

Food for thought. Powell and his defenders keep waving the “independence” banner as if repeating the word can erase the actual power structure they sit inside. They know the law doesn’t say the Fed is “completely independent,” they know governors serve under a statute that Congress can rewrite, and they know the president’s “for cause” removal power is real, not imaginary. Nowhere in the Federal Reserve Act, or its major amendments, does Congress declare that the Federal Reserve is “completely independent.” Instead, the statute creates a central bank that is structurally insulated in certain ways (long terms, removal‑for‑cause language, self‑funding) but explicitly remains a creature of Congress, operating under a mandate Congress defines and can change at any time. The narrative of a fully independent Fed comes largely from Federal Reserve officials and sympathetic commentators, not from the statutory text itself. Yet they go on selling the public a fairy tale in which a politically appointed board, operating under a congressional mandate and living in constant dialogue with the White House and Treasury, somehow floats above politics. That isn’t principled central banking; it’s branding, an attempt to launder deeply political choices through a technocratic mystique and then dare anyone who points to the statute, the appointment process, or the removal fights to be dismissed as ignorant of how the Fed works. Below is a perfect example of projection. 👇

@SantiagoAuFund Independent just like Yellen walking out of the Fed and into the Treasury for Biden....it's ludicrous.

Fed Independence is a Myth. A bedtime story they tell people to make them think someone is fighting for the little guy against the big bad Government. Powell's ego has him fighting dragons.

@NickTimiraos Inflation is transitory and the balance sheet is free to expand as much as they want....all that needs to be said about "independence" is Yellen walked out of the Fed and into the Treasury....spare me...

Former Philadelphia Fed president Patrick Harker offers a personal reflection upon Powell's decision to not leave the Fed board as his term as chair concludes: "Fed independence is not an abstraction. It is the daily practice of making decisions on the merits.... It is maintained by chairmen who absorb pressure and keep the room functioning, and sometimes by chairmen who delay their own retirement to keep the room standing. Jay has done both." linkedin.com/pulse/jay-powe…

The idea that Janet Yellen and Jerome Powell or their predecessors were independent arbiters of only the dual mandate is misguided. They are political actors with allegiance to certain groups and schools of thought...using the Fed balance sheet as a weapon is only the latest example

Central Bankers they don’t serve capitalism. They serve their own interests. If capitalism were their aim, we would have built stronger industries, deeper productive capacity, and a broader class of owners, makers, engineers, farmers, builders and manufacturers. Instead, the system was selected for deindustrialisation. It rewarded financial extraction over production, asset inflation over wages, imports over national capability, and dependence over sovereignty. In the 17th century, a serf might work three days for the manor house. Today, many workers spend a similar portion of their lives working for the bank. The name and firm have changed, but the system is familiar. The modern worker is chained to his shelter by debt, rent, mortgages, fees, inflation and financial claims created by institutions that contribute little to the real economy. In a systemic sense, they are patristic; sure, they provide capital, though in this cycle, they provided capital to financialise the systems indentured workers. The banks don't support the economy. Too often, they sit above it. They create credit, expand asset prices, collect interest, and then claim they are the indispensable engine of prosperity. But when finance grows too large, it stops funding production and starts feeding on it. We stopped funding production decades ago. Which is the cycle? Every time banks and financial interests overstep, they become too greedy. Every time they become too greedy, they distort the economy. Every time they distort the economy, the political class eventually protects them instead of the public. Then the technocratic class arrives to justify the arrangement with complicated language, models, forecasts and moral lectures. But the outcome is fewer real industries, fewer independent producers, fewer competitive markets, and more dependence on a narrow class of financial and technological gatekeepers. Hamilton understood the importance of productive industry. Eisenhower warned against concentrated power and the military-industrial machine. Robert Menzies understood that national strength required more than consumption and financial speculation. Leaders of the past, whatever their flaws, often understood something many modern leaders have forgotten: liberty is not built on debt, dependence and imports. Freedom rests on the ability of a people to make things, defend themselves, feed themselves, power themselves and not be permanently beholden to foreign suppliers or domestic financiers. A nation that cannot produce is not truly sovereign. A nation that cannot manufacture becomes strategically weak. A nation that sells off its productive base and calls the result “efficiency” is not modernising, it is dismantling its own state. When production and finance fall out of balance, rivalry becomes inevitable. Nations that lose their industrial base become insecure. Nations that dominate supply chains become aggressive. Financial elites profit from instability, while ordinary people pay the price through inflation, unemployment, debt and war. Central banks and financial institutions may not print ammunition directly, but they create the conditions that make conflict more likely. They inflate assets, punish workers, reward speculation, and push nations into dependency. Then, when the imbalance becomes dangerous, the same class that caused the instability presents itself as the only class capable of managing it. Real capitalism requires competition, productive investment, broad ownership, failure for the incompetent, reward for the capable, and markets that are not permanently rigged in favour of insiders. But most of the modern economy is not that. It is dominated by duopolies, monopolies, cartels, too-big-to-fail banks, captured regulators, and technology platforms that behave more like private governments than companies. Capitalism exists as an ideal, and at certain points in the economic cycle, it briefly appears. But it rarely remains pure for long. Power concentrates. Finance captures politics. Corporations eliminate competitors. Banks socialise losses and privatise gains. The productive economy gets hollowed out while everyone is told this is progress. A free society cannot survive on financial engineering, imported goods, inflated property values and digital monopolies. It needs productive strength. It needs industry. It needs skilled workers. It needs competition. It needs national independence. Above all, it needs a system where money serves the real economy, not the other way around. Once finance becomes the master rather than the servant, liberty begins to disappear. And once a nation forgets how to make things, it eventually forgets how to defend itself.

@ctindale I always appreciate your insights but you need to spread the word in Beijing, Delhi and other emerging mkts that are increasing their use of coal...until they change course dramatically the best course is to prepare. They have some valid points about why they need coal though

The El Niño Index (ONI) uses a rolling 30-year baseline, updated every five years, that subtracts recent anthropogenic ocean warming. This makes today’s “strong” El Niños register as milder than they truly are against a historical baseline. Yet coral reefs, crops, fisheries and coastal communities feel absolute sea-surface temperatures. Nature can’t hide behind the statistical smoothing The result: supercharged heatwaves, droughts, floods and marine die-offs that strike harder and more often , yet official charts shrink the crisis, delaying the urgency to cut emissions before the next “normal” event turns catastrophic. My tip is one of the surprise revelations of the next decade ( even for you skeptics out there ) is global warming was way worse than we ever imagined .

@tyillc Good point. BXSL seems to be trading fine though..

@jlhaggerty1 The problem with opaque securities is there are no buyers as the buyers don't have the info they need to value the securities ... opaque markets freeze when the valuation story underlying the securities called into doubt ...

"But it is the hidden, undisclosed leverage and fear of the unknown that could become a greater concern if private credit’s woes persist. Lots of BDC investors used to think they understood what they owned. For many there is no way they could know." From WSJ's Jonathan Weil: wsj.com/finance/invest…

@PeterLakewood @ulrichspeck Then Spain can send men and weapons to Lithuania...that's the idea of an alliance ...

@jlhaggerty1 @ulrichspeck Spain is completely safe from Russian invasion. But Lithuania clearly isn't.

A lot of debates in Europe: who would come to our help if Russia attacked us? There will always be uncertainty, as it was during the Cold War. The best indicator is not what ambitious politicians say but what countries' national interests are.

@Gaurab sad thing is that this shortage was predictable up to 5 yrs ago....

You cannot buy a new gas turbine until 2030. Order books at GE, Siemens, and Mitsubishi stretch to 2029. Turbine prices have nearly tripled since 2019. Every AI data center needs power and every gas plant needs a turbine. And every turbine has one part that bottlenecks the entire industry: The blade. It has to survive in gas 500°C above the melting point of the metal it's made from and spin at up to 20,000 RPM under 10,000 g of centrifugal force. Each blade is grown as a single crystal of nickel superalloy, pulled through a vacuum furnace at 3 mm per minute. A set of blades costs $600,000 and takes 90 weeks to grow. The same metallurgy powers modern jet engines. Only 3 companies on Earth can build one. China spent $42 billion trying to catch up. They bought a Russian fighter engine, took it apart, and copied every part. Their copy ran 30 hours between overhauls versus 400 for the original. Modern Western engines run 4,000. You can reverse engineer the shape of a turbine blade. You cannot reverse engineer 60 years of metallurgy.

@AnnoyedBook And this is why Merz is deflecting to Orange Man bad...he may well be bad but Merz has other motives x.com/ronzheimer/sta…

@wesbury Exactly, inflation is transient Powell.. Use the balance sheet as a weapon. Liaison with his predecessor who moved to the Biden Treasury....non political is absurd.. He's a political actor to the highest degree

“My concern is legal attacks on the Fed, which threaten our ability to conduct monetary policy without considering political factors,” Powell said. My concern is QE, which increases inequality and affects politics and the Fed financing deficits at artificially low rates, which drives spending higher than it should be, which also affects politics. The Fed got into politics, not the other way around.

@christianmiele x.com/ronzheimer/sta…

Heute war glaube ich der bisher schwerste Tag der schwarz-roten Koalition. Flächendeckend setzt die Erkenntnis ein, dass die schlechten Kompromisse nur der Koalition und ihrem Erhalt dienen, nicht aber unserer Volkswirtschaft und unserer Wettbewerbsfähigkeit. Panik macht sich breit bei CDU/CSU und SPD. Erkenntnis und Ernüchterung setzen ein bei allen Beobachtern. Es würde mich nicht wundern, wenn es jetzt noch dynamischer wird und der Druck durch die Medien gewaltig(er) wird. Dieser GKV Blödsinn und dieser Möchtegern-Haushalt sind inhaltliche Sprengfallen. Ich bleibe bei meiner Aussage aus dem Dezember: Diese Koalition schafft 2026 nicht - leider. Die einzige Chance wären historische Reformen um wieder auf Wachstumskurs zu kommen. Aber die Hoffnung schwindet minütlich.

@BerlinReporter x.com/ronzheimer/sta…

Es ist eine so elektrische Stimmung in Berlin wie ich sie - ich glaube - noch nie erlebt habe. Die einschlägigen Telegram- und WhatsApp-Gruppen quillen über, im Bundestag und in den Ministerien herrscht eine Anspannung wie vor einem Orkan.

@eugyppius1 x.com/ronzheimer/sta…

Merz is in serious trouble with his own party. BILD now reporting on collapsing morale within the chancellery and CDU ranks about Merz's prospects. Gossip ++ Suspicion ++ Questions of Guilt: THE MOOD IN THE CHANCELLERY HAS SHIFTED

@POLITICOEurope x.com/ronzheimer/sta…

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz sought to cool tensions today with U.S. President Donald Trump, insisting their relationship remains strong despite a sharp public spat over the Iran war. politico.eu/article/friedr…

@ulrichspeck and then there's this: x.com/ronzheimer/sta…

Merz doing damage control.