After decades of market liberalism and fiscal fundamentalism, policymakers are returning to Keynes. Jeff Snider reacts to two recent articles: "Bond yields are not good predictors of inflation" (Peterson Institute for International Economics) and "Why economists kept getting the policies wrong" (Financial Times). ----------WHERE---------- Vurbl: https://bit.ly/3rq4dPn Apple: https://apple.co/3czMcWN Deezer: https://bit.ly/3ndoVPE iHeart: https://ihr.fm/31jq7cI TuneIn: http://tun.in/pjT2Z Castro:...
Feb 21, 2021•21 min•Ep. 49
Financial historian Daniel Oliver's essay on the systemic consequence of the 1907 short squeeze on United Copper Company and lessons for today. A reading, by Emil Kalinowski. ----------WHO---------- Daniel Oliver of Myrmikan Capital, LLC. Read by Emil Kalinowski. Art by David Parkins. Intro/outro is "Alienated" by ELFL at Epidemic Sound. ----------WHAT---------- The Final Pop: https://bit.ly/37sfwOH ----------WHERE---------- Myrmikan's Writings: http://myrmikan.com/ Myrmikan's Twitter: https://t...
Feb 18, 2021•26 min•Ep. 48
Having studied monetary policy for several years it was only natural that your podcaster spent considerable time contemplating the essential elements of fiction. Some experts say there are five components to it; others put the tally at six, even eight! But at the core it has always been the three elements: plot, setting and character. Plot was perfected, in the Western tradition at least, in the late 16th century by Shakespeare with the 5-act dramatic structure. Setting, given short-shrift for m...
Feb 16, 2021•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 47
Jeff Snider reacts LIVE! to an article from The Economist . The magazine offers three arguments why the US economy might overheat in 2021: evidence that the downturn is temporary; generous fiscal stimulus; and the Federal Reserve’s monetary-policy strategy. ----------WHERE---------- Vurbl: https://bit.ly/3rq4dPn Apple: https://apple.co/3czMcWN Deezer: https://bit.ly/3ndoVPE iHeart: https://ihr.fm/31jq7cI TuneIn: http://tun.in/pjT2Z Castro: https://bit.ly/30DMYza Google: https://bit.ly/3e2Z48M Sp...
Feb 15, 2021•18 min•Ep. 46
Sophocles won 24 of the 30 literary competitions he entered, placing second in the rest. Of his 120-plus plays, only seven survive. Eratosthenes, calculated the Earth's circumference with breathtaking accuracy. As Chief Librarian of the Library of Alexandria he oversaw the collation of hundreds of thousands of works. But not even his own "On the Measure of the Earth" survived the Library's progressive destruction by war, negligence and cultural revolution. Rashid-al-Din Hamadani created the firs...
Feb 08, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 45
As many listeners have long suspected, your podcast host did, as a child, run away and join the circus. Not dissimilar from a traditional childhood, it was your classic Gypsy camp. If children misbehaved, we would be "lock[ed]... into stocks, or throw[n]... into a cage and hoist[ed]... into the flytower... dangling precariously over the stage." Our ringmaster, Giuseppe Grimaldi "was horribly morbid, living in perpetual fear of death, and especially of being buried alive. When he finally died... ...
Jan 24, 2021•48 min•Ep. 43
A recent Hidden Forces podcast with Demetri Kofinas featured professor Kevin Vallier and his new book "Trust in a Polarized Age". Vallier notes that Americans are less trusting than at any point since at least the 1960s. The timing is no surprise to any that read William Strauss and Neil Howe's The Fourth Turning. The "American High" - a period of confidence during which the society felt it could accomplish anything - ended with President Kennedy's assassination. That phenomenon - that lack of t...
Jan 19, 2021•43 min•Ep. 42
Mary Toft had delivered a litter of rabbits - that was the news that reached the court of King George I in 1726. Obstetrician John Howard arrived at Toft's bedside in September where he was presented with several animal parts, ostensibly from the supernatural womb. In October, she delivered nine dead baby rabbits, prompting Howard to write a letter to England's greatest doctors and scientists, as well as the King's secretary. Nathaniel St. André, the King's Swiss surgeon-anatomist, was sent to i...
Jan 10, 2021•41 min•Ep. 41
In the middle of the 17th century, Athanasius Kircher -- "one of Europe’s most successful scholars" -- published "Egyptian Oedipus", a magisterial three-volume folio on Egyptology that "presented Latin translations of hieroglyphic inscriptions". The three-tome folio of ornate illustrations and diagrams was the product of "more than two decades of toil"; it sourced Arabic, Aramaic, Coptic, Ethiopian, Greek, Latin, Oriental and Samaritan texts. Kircher had illustrated "mummies, sarcophagi, Canopic...
Dec 24, 2020•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 40
Your podcaster has long been impressed by cinema that presents what is outside the human sensory process; art that conceives and presents what we literally cannot perceive. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrik shows us what transcendence is, by sending Keir Dullea through an astral rainbowfall. Christopher Nolan's Interstellar presents Matthew McConaughey in a tesseract, the three-dimensional shadow of four-dimensional space. In Annihilation, Alex Garland samples evolution, by introducing a ...
Dec 14, 2020•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 39
Christine Lagarde, Janet Yellen and Stephanie Kelton are among the world's best known political-economists. Lagarde, was France's Minister of Finance, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, and is President of the European Central Bank - all firsts for a lady. Yellen, was America's Chair of the Federal Reserve and is presumptive nominee for US Secretary of the Treasury - each a first for a lady. Kelton, was advisor to the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign, is a best-sellin...
Dec 07, 2020•58 min•Ep. 38
“The Case of the Missing Money” is not an Arthur Conan Doyle short-story but instead a 1976 essay by well-known economist Stephen Goldfeld who noticed that there wasn’t enough money to justify the high level of economic activity at that time. Goldfeld explained that money was traditionally a simple function of, “real gross national product, [and] the interest rates on savings and time deposits at commercial banks and on commercial paper.” But that formula was suddenly producing “whopping”, “unpr...
Nov 30, 2020•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 37
Part 01: What can the late-19th century Long Depression (1873-96) tell us about the early-21st century Silent Depression (2008-2?)? We turn to Henry George, the author of the most popular economics book of all time to learn what he got right, got wrong and how it applies to the present. Part 02: An estimated 742,000 Americans submitted initial claims for unemployment insurance in the week ending November 14. That is 'worst all-time' prior to the 2020 experience and is wholly inappropriate EIGHT ...
Nov 23, 2020•54 min•Ep. 36
PART 01: US Treasury yields have risen on positive news, especially following the CoVo Vax news from Pfizer. Does it mean reflation has begun? Does it mean the 40-year bond bull market is dead? What do other economic accounts say? PART 02: America's unemployment rate plummeted from 14.7% to 6.9% in six short months! But it's the same 2010-15 mirage. Even the Federal Reserve doesn't believe it - that's why they edited away the idea of "full employment" in August 2020. PART 03: Communists in Beiji...
Nov 18, 2020•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 35
A social contract is the agreement between government, business, wealthy and ordinary households in how to apportion the costs and benefits of society. The recently concluded (?) American election comes to mind, as a potential first step towards a new (green?) deal. In this, the 34th episode of Making Sense, Jeff Snider identifies another, less obvious freshly fashioned contract: China and its recent 14th Five-Year plan. But as Snider explains, question marks are not unique to democratic republi...
Nov 11, 2020•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 34
Broadcasting from the kingdom of NYE, I'm Art Bell and this is Coast to Coast AM from the great beyond. Tonight we'll talk to General Johnson Jameson from his bunker complex beneath the Saskatchewan crust, as to whether Y2K can still happen. Then... 'Do you want to believe?!' The government doesn't want you to. Chris Carter, creator of the X-Files, will tell us exactly which episodes the government didn't want you to see. Also, Rod Sterling will join me live in studio... well in a manner of spea...
Nov 02, 2020•55 min•Ep. 33
The bread of this podcast hotdog features Jeff Snider putting into context how far behind the times monetary authorities are, and that all may not be as it seems with the appreciating Chinese currency. But the middle, the wiener if you will, is about the unit root. But please! Before you throw your device across the room in disgust rather than listen to yet another podcast about monomial equations and non-stationary processes realize that it's all about econometricians assuming economies do not ...
Oct 26, 2020•55 min•Ep. 32
American economist and New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman entered the economics profession to follow in the footsteps of Hari Seldon, a psychohistorian living on Trantor, approximately 10,000 years into the future. Seldon, psychohistory and Trantor are all from Isaac Assimov's Foundation series published between 1951 to '53. Seldon used, "the mathematics of human behaviour to save civilisation," as Krugman put it. Admittedly, "economics is a pretty poor substitute", muses Krugman, "[b]ut I t...
Oct 19, 2020•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 31
As your podcaster put the finishing touches on Episode 30 word came down from up-on-high: 'We need to do errata!' Yes! Finally! This podcaster's long-time goal would be a reality: to make economics erotic again. To tell the world that economists can stimulate. To inform that offshore bankers do it in the shadows. To broadcast that technical analysis has the best curves with those plunging chart necklines. The undulating data and heaving economic activity. Going long Treasuries. Wanting yield. Oh...
Oct 12, 2020•56 min•Ep. 30
Advanced-economy money centers make the world go round. In the early 1800s London and Paris funded globalization cycles. Berlin and Vienna joined the exclusive club as the century waned; New York at the start of the next. Today, East Asia's cities are members, including Singapore and Hong Kong. But the 800-pound sumo wrestler of the Pacific basin is, and has been, Tokyo. Some speculate it was there at the beginning of the eurodollar, putting overseas dollars, held by WW2 service members, to work...
Oct 04, 2020•56 min•Ep. 29
In 1969 Johnny Carson was hosting The Tonight Show and, in one particular episode, Bob Hope headlined. After Carson finished interviewing Hope he called out his next guest, George Gobel. To everyone's surprise the person that walked out on stage was most certainly not Gobel. It was none other than the Italian Crooner himself, Dean Martin. Now, as was Martin's style in those days, he was already two cognacs into the next day's hangover, which made for a rocking good show. Eventually Gobel did mak...
Sep 27, 2020•46 min•Ep. 28
US President Harry Truman prosecuted the war to its conclusion, finishing his predecessor's near-impossible task. Then, with bitter irony, History reversed his role as "anchor" for the Second World War into "lead" for the third. As the trilogy approached its near-miraculous end decades later, one could hear an echo of a Truman slogan - “Education is our first line of defense” - in the 1980s cartoon GI*Joe that averred, “Knowing is half the battle.” Both aphorisms are twigs coming off the "Knowle...
Sep 20, 2020•57 min•Ep. 27
How much is several? What is a few? If you were to put a numerical value on "probably" would it be more, or less, than "likely"? To your podcaster's great consternation the linguistic gatekeepers of Middle English appear to have been rather disinterested about it all. And so, people are constantly late... or early! 'I thought we were to meet in a few hours?' 'No! It was several.' 'Oh, right.' Women seem to revel in these nuances, arriving for a date with this podcaster when it pleases them and t...
Sep 14, 2020•52 min•Ep. 26
Last week, current and former Federal Reserve officials offered a mea culpa, saying the timing of the 2015-18 rate hikes may have curbed a potentially quicker recovery from 2008. Apparently, seven to ten years is not enough time. Well then, if time is the problem your podcaster will take a page out of Hugh Hendry's book. Recently the early-21st century Scottish philosopher suggested the Fed would be taken seriously at its attempt of irresponsibility if it was headed by the funny, mixed martial a...
Sep 06, 2020•52 min•Ep. 25
"I am Oz, the Great and Terrible. Why do you seek me?" They looked again in every part of the room, and then, seeing no one, Dorothy asked, "Where are you?" "I am everywhere but to the eyes of common mortals I am invisible. I will now seat myself upon my throne, that you may converse with me." "We have come to claim our promise, O Oz." "What promise?" asked Oz. "You promised to send me back to Kansas when the Wicked Witch was destroyed. "And you promised to give me brains," said the Scarecrow. "...
Aug 31, 2020•50 min•Ep. 24
Magrathea. It is one of legendary, advanced-economy planets of the human imagination sitting along side Asimov's Trantor of the Foundation Series, and Cybertron, home of the Autobots and Decepticons. Sure, there are other fabled worlds like Cameron's Pandora, Besson's Fhloston Paradise Herbert's Arrakis, but these are - let's be honest - emerging economies. What made Magrathea a galactic leader in economic complexity is that it WAS a planet-building planet. As we learn in Douglas Adams' Hitchhik...
Aug 23, 2020•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 23
The final setting of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale occurs well into the future, at a symposium of historians examining the Handmaid era. Your podcaster expects a similar, future gathering of sober scholars evaluating the Time of CoVid. They'll likely conclude it was an economic and political bankruptcy - a mathematical and moral fiasco. Still, it wasn't all bad, and this podcaster imagines that sitting at the back of the room a lowly assistant will indecorously interrupt proceedings with...
Aug 17, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 22
Life is full of problems. And when particularly irritated by them, we turn to professionals for help. Sure, men - especially the married kind - will insist they can take care of it. Plumbing? No problem. The Johnson-rod is loose in the car? I got it. Open wound with compound bone fracture? Rub some dirt on it. Still, eventually even men will get to a point when they'll ask for directions, because what can be done - they built the city all wrong. And so, when the technical expert is called we dam...
Aug 09, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 21
Baseball. The nation's pastime. For well over a century the sport has nestled itself in the romantic nook of America's soul. Its greatness captured in sentimental movies like The Natural and Field of Dreams. But light is balanced with darkness and for all its majesty the sport bears scandals and self-inflicted wounds: the 1919 Black Sox, a racial barrier. And of course, there's that gray space between light and dark where tragi-comedy lies. The 1888 poem Casey at Bat. Yogi Berra's relationship w...
Aug 03, 2020•52 min•Ep. 20
Now, admittedly SOME commodity prices have gone up. Half of the agricultural and livestock prices are up year-to-date. Copper is up! But these are the results of supply line disruptions and demand surges. The temporary, transitory reactions to the CoVo. NOT the persistent, broad-based multi-year inflation carried in by a monetary surge that central bankers suggest. Almost every energy-based commodity is DOWN. Most all industrial metals are DOWN. We address the issue in three segments, in this, t...
Jul 27, 2020•54 min•Ep. 19
