1 month ago
Neither Volcker nor Warsh got to choose both — fight inflation and accept recession, or protect growth and let prices run.
A new chairman, oil-driven inflation, long bonds selling off, the S&P within 2% of all-time highs. September 1987 wrote this script word for word.
Brent at $105, both Gulf exit routes compromised, the Fed meets in four days — and August CPI prints this morning.
The last time the ECB raised rates into energy-driven inflation while the eurozone was already contracting, Paul Krugman named it 'The Mistake of 2008.' Christine Lagarde steps to a Berlin podium today to make the same call.
Same attacker, same target, same week-of-FOMC timing — and a Brent price already 47 percent higher than the morning Abqaiq burned.
Norway's $2.3 trillion fund proposes cutting its Treasury stake by a third. China at its lowest since 2008. Foreign holdings down $72 billion in a single month. The last time this moved this fast, a president held an emergency briefing at nine in the morning.
LBJ deployed his Treasury Secretary, his chief economist, and finally his own body. Martin hiked anyway. The inflation that followed took seventeen years and a recession to kill.
ISM prices at 72.6%, employment contracting — the same hairline fracture that appeared on an X-ray nobody ordered in October 2000. The Fed votes in eleven days.
