Mind the Cup

uncertainty, the Fed, blame games, and breaking patterns

some reflections on macro and true micro - podcast and youtube up soon

This was the year that everything went backwards - things didn’t work the way that we thought they should work, things did work the way that we thought they shouldn’t work, and any priors had to be thrown out the window (along with ego).

• A lot of the emphasis this year (and rightly so!) was on inflation - managing inflation, battling inflation, investing through inflation, etc. It was about carving a path through the ordeal, and policy became about managing emotion through data.

• “How is everyone feeling” was a core question as we thought about *everything* - fiscal and monetary policy, political decision making, stocks and bonds.

Legislation is hard, but mood is cheap, as Alex Williams said.

However, the mood of this year was wonky!!

A lot of systems are (and have been) fragile. So when supply chains got tested, when the labor market flipped, when mortgage rates skyrocketed, the promise of This is How It Will Be was br…