The last time inflation was this high was Nov 1990

Then:

Inflation 6.3%
2 year treasury yields 7.8%

Now:

Inflation 6.2%
2 year treasury yields 0.4%

Which scenario is worse?

I guess it depends if you're a saver or a borrower?

QE, Liquidity Removal, and the Alchemy of Money

I’ve been watching @MetreSteven say stuff like “QE removes liquidity” on here for a while after which people sort of stare blankly or roll their eyes.

Let’s give it one more go, via a traditionally quirky explainer.
1/

At the heart of every monetary system is an act of alchemy.

Let us start by describing this act: the act of monetary creation.

At the center of alchemy lies the Philosopher's Stone - the prime reagent for money creation.

For a long time this was gold.
2/

For if you had gold, you could lend against it.

From the Philosopher's stone of gold, we could spawn two things:

1. Circulating money
2. Debt

Money and debt are twins, both born of the philosopher's stone and their fates forever linked.
3/

For you see, there are rules which govern alchemy.

An alchemist is only allowed to create a certain amount of money for each philosopher's stone.

And the Debt was greater than the Money (due to interest), making the system inherently deflationary.
4/

And this deflationary nature drove the people to want more money in circulation.

So the rules of alchemy were evolved to allow each stone to create more money (fractional reserve banking).
5/

Hello $29 trillion...

https://t.co/XgZmSZVGu0

The reported national debt has been stuck at $28.9 trillion as we hit the new "debt ceiling" back in October, only a few days after it was raised. It now needs to be raised again, with the next debt ceiling "deadline" on Dec 3. When that happens, we'll quickly hit $29 trillion.

@evan_lorenz Exactly this.

Plus in a gold-based system, smaller entities (SMBs or sole proprietors) could presumably even self-custody to reduce the carrying cost of gold to zero.

This is not possible with bitcoin, in which one owns a share of a collective and equally distributed liability.

The hilarity of all this, to me, is that Bitcoin makes the most sense if viewed as a Marxist worker’s rebellion.

The central promise is UBI: buy tokens that increase in value forever, granting you wealth for doing nothing.

And the cost is the future.

Smart-sounding reasons to sell as the market rose:

h/t @morganhousel

@SantiagoAuFund No. This is what they will likely eventually be forced to do to avoid such an outcome.