Supply & demand is one of those economic fundamentals to which everyone bows as if an incontrovertible truth – except it applies less and less to things that can be scaled up with little marginal cost (such as many digital products) and offered often for little to no cash outlay.
When someone truly has vision – when that person really sees what that person sees and can’t unsee it & when what the person sees is something they see makes the difference, courage arises & energizes, not the fear, doubt or weakness sapping those who see less well or not at all.
As a concept, geopolitics now includes domestic politics: they’re interlinked on a 2-way road. Foreign powers have an easy digital path into countries’ (like the US’) domestic life. Their influence on domestic life in turn affects how countries like the US conduct foreign policy.
JP Morgan produced “goldilocks” results by their own admission. They’re an excellent bank. Why then does their CEO, no matter what, spew out a non-stop stream of negative takes on economy, geopolitics - everything! How about solutions? Goals? Positive energy? Hope?
As someone who’s been in the investment business where true practitioners are measured by others & have records, I still wonder whether the many nonsensical things I read from professionals are because they’re misinformed, temperamentally stuck in one gear, or have agendas?
Another one! A fixed income strategist from a major firm warns that inflation could rise to 4% again. Anyone who’s been right for the right reasons about inflation and no recession these past 3 years knows this occurrence is in the category of an asteroid hitting the earth.
Despite panicky headlines about traders buckling up for “no landing” (ie no rate cuts), I cannot recall a US economy that has been more balanced & stronger with declining inflation. I think the surprise will be how compatible rate cuts, low inflation & economic strength will be.
While there’s the usual parsing of every potential twitch of fact or conjecture that the parsers believe can help scope out the future, there is only one major issue to process (and it hasn’t happened yet): what, after Nov 5, will the US’ very winner-dependent macro policies be?
Ethan Mollick rightly sees the potential of AI first bubbling up from the knowledge worker rather than permeating the organization from the top down. That is why the productivity enhancements of AI remain concealed. open.substack.com/pub/oneusefu...
Meet the Lab and the Crowd
And, per my previous post… Larry Summers who has also been wrong over these past 3 years is now pronouncing the Fed’s 50 basis point cut “a mistake”. Why? Because he persists in believing it’s impossible to have a strong economy and low inflation. There’s the mistake!