3/3
The second issue is more structural. After 2008 and again in 2020, policymakers injected extraordinary liquidity into the system to prevent collapse. That money did not simply disappear. It flowed into financial assets, real estate, private markets, and the balance sheets of people and institutions that already owned assets.
That leaves the Fed in an uncomfortable position.
If rates rise, owners of scarce assets, including equities, real estate, businesses, infrastructure, and income producing investments, can often absorb it. In some cases, they benefit. Cash earns more, weaker competitors lose access to financing, and asset ownership becomes even more concentrated. The result can be persistent asset price strength and inflationary pressure despite tighter policy.
If rates fall, the outcome is more obvious. Easy money returns, leverage expands, speculative capital comes back, and inflation gets another tailwind.
So the question is no longer simply whether the Fed hikes or cuts. The deeper problem is that after years of crisis era intervention, the economy may be at a point where both directions have inflationary consequences.
Higher rates reward existing capital. Lower rates create more capital chasing the same limited assets.
That is why markets can look so resilient in the face of tightening, and why inflation may prove much harder to defeat than the old playbook suggests.
1/3
The market’s muted response to Fed rate hikes is not a sign that monetary policy no longer matters. It is a sign that the economy, and more importantly asset markets, have changed.
2/3
This cycle is not like the housing driven boom of the early 2000s. Back then, cheap financing sat at the center of the expansion. Mortgages, homebuilders, consumer leverage, and real estate speculation were all highly sensitive to borrowing costs. Raise rates and the engine slowed quickly.
Today’s boom is concentrated in areas that are less immediately rate sensitive. Large technology companies, AI infrastructure, data centers, defense, energy, and cash rich corporations are driving the market. Many of the firms lifting the major indexes are not dependent on a new mortgage or a floating rate loan to keep growing. Their investment cases are built around earnings concentration, strategic capital spending, and expectations of future productivity, not merely cheap credit.
"If you don't own assets... if you don't own bitcoin... you're going to be left far behind. Yes, your life on average is better than it was back in the Dark Ages... but you're going to have to work forever basically. That's the problem we're creating." - @jameslavish
@Tesla AAA puts new-car ownership at $0.77 per mile. Tesla’s Cybercab is targeting about $0.20 per mile at scale. If those numbers hold, does owning a car still make financial sense?
@Matt_Hougan If we grow our way out of this, and AI is the next Industrial Revolution, then AI needs faster financial rails. Those rails will be crypto and Bitcoin. Holding Bitcoin is a win-win-win.
#AI could make intelligence, software, and content incredibly abundant. But when almost anything can be created instantly, the things that are genuinely hard to reproduce may become even more valuable.
That could include assets like bitcoin:native, desirable real estate, especially waterfront property, and even human attention. In a world full of unlimited content, trust, ownership, and what is truly scarce may matter more than ever.