-----PART 01 SUMMARY------ US President Jimmy Carter told the nation that the US dollar's devaluation "is clearly not warranted by the fundamental economic situation". In fact, it was unreservedly deserved as the necessary consequence of prolonged official incompetence. -----PART 02 SUMMARY------ US producer prices surged in the month of March. But Federal Reserve chairman Jay Powell said they won't last, that they are "transitory". HE IS RIGHT! But the reason he gives - the covo - is not correc...
Apr 19, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 65
The Economist says, 'No! They are white knights to be held in reserve; don't sully them with politics.' Jeff Snider agrees on the 'No!', but for entirely opposite reasons. ---------SEE IT----------- Alhambra YouTube: https://bit.ly/2Xp3roy Emil YouTube: https://bit.ly/310yisL ---------HEAR IT---------- 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...
Apr 16, 2021•15 min•Ep. 64
Karen King of the Harvard Divinity School wasn't the first 'professor' to discover "the long-buried secret of Jesus' marriage." That distinction belongs to fellow Harvard faculty member Robert Langdon, protagonist in Dan Brown's 2003 novel, The Da Vinci Code. Langdon was a fiction. King on the other hand was not; she held the very real Hollis Professorship of Divinity established in 1721 - the oldest, and arguably most prestigious, endowed chair in America. And there she was, in Rome, just seven...
Apr 14, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 63
"I glanced at the list, running over names (probably misspelled) that meant nothing to me, with my hand on the butt of my righthand gun. That one now contained a very special load. According to Vannay, there was only one sure way to kill a skin-man: with a piercing object of the holy metal. I had paid the blacksmith in gold, but the bullet he’d made me – the one that would roll under the hammer at first cock – was pure silver." The scene is from The Wind Through the Keyhole, a 2012 Stephen King ...
Apr 06, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 62
So says Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell in a recent Wall Street Journal opinion column. Jeff Snider listens and reacts to Powell's case that the disruption wasn't the Fed's fault and that the central bank did the best it could. ---------SEE IT----------- Alhambra YouTube: https://bit.ly/2Xp3roy Emil YouTube: https://bit.ly/310yisL ---------HEAR IT---------- Vurbl: https://bit.ly/3rq4dPn Apple: https://apple.co/3czMcWN Deezer: https://bit.ly/3ndoVPE iHeart: https://ihr.fm/31jq7cI TuneIn: h...
Mar 31, 2021•17 min•Ep. 61
Jeff Snider is in his element in Episode 60, in which he observes the 20th anniversary of quantitative easing and notes the unsettling twist in oil futures; also, he reacts to the Federal Reserve Chairman who recently likened the Fed's actions last year, to the heroic Dunkirk evacuation. Your podcaster on the other hand comes out of the gate staggering by slandering everyone's favorite nation: New Zealand. Operating under the false impression that The Hobbit was a documentary, this podcaster ope...
Mar 29, 2021•1 hr•Ep. 60
March 23, 2020 is a day that no financial market participant will forget. It was the day that America's S&P 500 put in its low and stock prices began their climb to "what looks like a permanently high plateau." More importantly, it was the day that Making Sense debuted. Yes, Jeff Snider and I decided that what the world really needed in the time of Covid and financial Armageddon was another financial podcast, and that we were going to give it to them. To commemorate the anniversary I propose...
Mar 23, 2021•45 min•Ep. 59
Welcome to Making Sense. Jeff Snider and I are joined by a very special guest, Izabella Kaminska who has accomplished many accomplished things, including being the editor of FT Alphaville, the Financial Times blog. Though to refer to Alphaville as a mere blog, would be a gross disservice. No ladies and gentlemen, it is much more than that. It is the modern-day equivalent of the 17th-century London coffeehouse. Both, forums for transactions, spirited debate, and the exchange of information, ideas...
Mar 22, 2021•1 hr 48 min•Ep. 58
Will stagnation follow the Biden Boom? So asks New York Times columnist (and Nobel memorial prize winner) Paul Krugman. Jeff Snider listens and reacts to Krugman's lament that, though the relief bill is done, recovery may be harder. ---------SEE IT----------- AlhambraTube: https://bit.ly/2Xp3roy ---------HEAR IT---------- 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/3...
Mar 18, 2021•20 min•Ep. 57
Space, the final metaphor. Why do central bankers offer spirographic, retrograde answers? Because they operate within a Ptolemaic paradigm - a geocentric model of our monetary system in which the central bank is the hub around which all else revolves. Why is unobservable, offshore credit fundamentally important? Because like dark matter and dark energy, this shadow money represents the broad majority of material and heat that constitute our monetary universe. Which brings your podcaster to the 2...
Mar 15, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 56
Wolf ponders what central banks should target (e.g. inflation, asset prices, social justice, nominal GDP). Incredibly at no point in the article was targeting actual money supply considered. WILD! ---------SPONSOR---------- But first, this from Eurodollar Enterprises! Friends, do you direct the Treasury Ministry? Do your political masters expect foaming asset prices? Are you unsure how to produce lasting froth? Then a box of Bath Suds from Eurodollar Enterprises is for you! Yes, practice blowing...
Mar 10, 2021•18 min•Ep. 55
"The pen is mightier than the sword." "The great unwashed." "Pursuit of the almighty dollar." These are prhases we have all heard and they come from a single source: 19th century English writer and politician Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton. Bulwer-Lytton was a successful novelist, poet and playwright. His political accomplishments included nine years in Parliament, serving as the British Colonial Secretary, and being offered - AND TURNING DOWN - both a lordship of the Admiralty AND the...
Mar 08, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 54
Should speculative ventures be included in calculations of inflation? What about productive investment? Housing? All transactions? Or just consumer prices? ----------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 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3arP8mY Pandora: https://pdora.co/2GQL3Qg Breaker: https://bit.ly/2CpHAFO Cast...
Mar 03, 2021•17 min•Ep. 53
The theme of Making Sense Episode 52 is how an environment reacts to an anomaly. Resilient systems keep these aberrations constrained. But fragile ones can retroactively redefine what had earlier been labeled as an "irregularity", "oddity" or "operational error" to something altogether more unsettling: "cause", "spark", "trigger". In part one, Jeff Snider continues his multi-week review of historical breaks to the smooth functioning of interbank payment and messaging systems. This time a look at...
Mar 01, 2021•57 min•Ep. 52
Michael Pettis of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Read by Emil Kalinowski . Art by David Parkins . Intro/outro is " The Village Idiot " by Justnormal at Epidemic Sound . ----------WHAT---------- How Trump’s Tariffs Really Affected the U.S. Job Market: https://bit.ly/2P7qHWJ ----------WHERE---------- Pettis' Writings: https://carnegieendowment.org/experts/444 Pettis' Twitter: https://twitter.com/michaelxpettis Vurbl: https://bit.ly/3rq4dPn Apple: https://apple.co/3czMcWN Deezer: https...
Feb 26, 2021•24 min•Ep. 51
Part 01: (01:30 to 38:27) What are monetary technocrats / financiers doing to save the world economy? We review: yield curve control in Australia (and Japan!), American regulators tip-toeing away from a once-favored LIBOR alternative, and the ecstatic economic expectations of German financiers. Part 02: (38:27 to 1:05:19) A Financial Times column warns of a US Treasury Bill air-pocket in March. Learn the little-known history of a mid-market, 1970s German bank that compelled regulators to move to...
Feb 22, 2021•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 50
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
