Monetary Wonk

Thoughts on markets, economics, Bitcoin, eth🦇🔊 and AI. Non-tribal. Non-ideological. independent. moderate. Measured takes.

[Monetary Wonk @MonetaryWonk]

Two important macro economic lessons from the past 20 years:

- debt can be monetized without excessive inflation (see Fed post GFC)

- fiscal policy/helicopter money IS effective for quickly mitigating demand shortages and restoring full employment (see Post Covid)

[Vivek Sen @Vivek4real_]

BILL ACKMAN: EVERY CEO IN AMERICA IS LOSING SLEEP OVER AI THREAT

“IT’S PROBABLY NUMBER ONE AS BOTH AN OPPORTUNITY AND A THREAT… YOUR BOARD IS GOING TO BE ASKING YOU FIRST QUESTION EVERY MEETING”

[Monetary Wonk @MonetaryWonk]

Insane

[Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh]

🚨 JUST NOW: New York is set to OUTLAW the term "MOTHER" and "FATHER" on some documentation because it's "outdated" and should be called "gestating parent" instead

Father = "non-gestating person"

WHAT ON EARTH IS WRONG WITH DEMOCRATS?!

[Monetary Wonk @MonetaryWonk]

@JimmySpencer @catskillcat65 Correct

[Monetary Wonk @MonetaryWonk]

@JimmySpencer @AutodidacDad Correct, 2 hands on the ball before he plants to the jump step. It’s a travel.

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

JUST IN: Anthropic warns Claude may be accelerating AI development toward self-improving systems “faster than we thought.”

[Monetary Wonk @MonetaryWonk]

Strong agree. Markets can fail, which is why some level of govt/fed intervention is beneficial when ag demand falls off a cliff. Moral hazard shouldn’t be the primary issue when failures are systemic (GFC/Covid).

[George Selgin @GeorgeSelgin]

🧵Yes there Is, or, We Need Stupid Free-Market Fundamentalism Like we Need Holes in Our Heads.

[Monetary Wonk @MonetaryWonk]

@NormalTater @LSDonTV More likely, his holdings are illiquid. His company isn’t public, so his net worth is in fact just “on paper.” Which is another problem with trying to to tax unrealized cap gains -it’s difficult to value some assets.

[Monetary Wonk @MonetaryWonk]

Stupid post. Iran is economically strangled and the US can strike in Iran at will. Trump loses far less as this drags out. Pressure is clearly building in Iran. There is nothing “foolish” about this strategy (and I’m not MAGA, just objective). To the extent Trump looks foolish, it’s the way he communicates.

[Monetary Wonk @MonetaryWonk]

Stupid post. Iran is economically strangled and the US can strike in Iran at will. Trump loses far less as this drags out. Pressure is clearly building in Iran. There is nothing “foolish” about this strategy (and I’m not MAGA, just objective). To the extent Trump looks foolish, it’s the way he communicates.

[Monetary Wonk @MonetaryWonk]

Quote of the day. And all they have to is NOT attack them….thanks for the help!

[*Walter Bloomberg @DeItaone]

IRAN'S PEZESHKIAN: WE WILL TRY TO MAKE THE PASSAGE OF JAPANESE SHIPS THROUGH HORMUZ EASIER

[Monetary Wonk @MonetaryWonk]

Like many things, the truth often doesn’t fit political narratives. Unfortunately, most of X doesn’t care. It’s tribalism all the way down.

[Monetary Wonk @MonetaryWonk]

True stats, but misleading. The issue is specifically the demographic - young men under 30. This is true globally. It’s genetics. You let a lot of them in, crime goes up. So it’s not cultural. It doesn’t have anything to do with immigration in general.

[WORLD NEWS @_MAGA_NEWS_]

PRESIDENT TRUMP: "In 2024, almost 50% of inmates in German prisons were foreign nationals or migrants.. In Switzerland, it’s 72%.. When your prisons are filled with so-called asylum-seekers who repaid kindness with crime, it's time to END the failed experiment of Open Borders."

[Peter H. Diamandis, MD @PeterDiamandis]

If you told someone in 1990 that a pocket device would access all human knowledge for free, they would call you insane.
Fast forward 30 years from now, what we think is insanity today WILL be possible.

[Monetary Wonk @MonetaryWonk]

@NormalTater @kamikazecash Few understand this, unfortunately

[Monetary Wonk @MonetaryWonk]

Staggering losses. In comparison, about 60.000 total US troops died in Vietnam - over 8 years.

[Tymofiy Mylovanov @Mylovanov]

Zelenskyy: I am ready to meet Putin if he is ready. Russia is losing 30,000–35,000 soldiers per month and mobilizing roughly the same number.

They are heading toward a manpower crisis, and that pressure can push them to dialogue. 1/

[Monetary Wonk @MonetaryWonk]

@DamianPudner @ZackPolanski Ok, but “don’t matter” and when deficits matter, are different things. We shouldn’t ignore bond markets, but they are not the word of God either.

[Monetary Wonk @MonetaryWonk]

Buffet is flat wrong. It has nothing to do with whether there is a deficit. Whether it is “stimulus” relies on the baseline state of the economy.

[Black Edge @BlackEdgeFund]

Warren Buffett on why fiscal policy matters less than everyone thinks:

Buffett reframes what "stimulus" actually means.

People fixate on whether there's a bill labelled stimulus, but he argues that misses the point entirely.

"If you had something was called a stimulus bill and you didn't run a deficit, it would not be a stimulus. And if you don't have anything you call a stimulus bill at all, but you're spending 10% more of your GDP than you're taking in, you are applying an incredible fiscal stimulus to the economy."

By that definition, the real stimulus is enormous:

"We have a huge fiscal stimulus program going on now and it's called taking in 15% of GDP and spending 25% of GDP. That's extraordinary."

He doesn't criticise this. In his view, pulling those levers was the right call:

"We have used those levers in a way that's almost unprecedented and I think it's been wise in general to do what's done."

And he singles out one moment as especially well-handled:

"I think it was particularly wise what was done in the fall of 2008."

But here's the counterintuitive turn.

After defending the policies, Buffett downplays how much they actually matter:

"I think generally we have followed the right policies. I think they're less important than most people think they are."

His point is that policy works mainly as a downside guardrail—you can break things by getting it wrong, but you can't engineer the recovery yourself:

"If you did the wrong policies it could really screw things up. But I think the natural resuscitative powers of capitalism will be the biggest factor in taking us out. And I think you've seen that over the last two years and we're seeing it month by month."

[Monetary Wonk @MonetaryWonk]

Pure class. Love this. The best of humanity.

[Novak Djokovic @DjokerNole]

An epic battle, Joao. And a hard-fought victory you deserve. Best of luck for the rest of the tournament and the incredible career you have ahead of you. 

As for Paris… tu as mon coeur 🫶🏼

[Monetary Wonk @MonetaryWonk]

In fairness, some of this is attributed to the willingness to seek help.

[Monetary Wonk @MonetaryWonk]

I didn’t believe it, but…..👇

[Robby Starbuck @robbystarbuck]

Harvard professor Arthur Brooks explains how data shows that the unhappiest and most mentally ill people are mostly on the political left while the happiest are on the right.

Liberal women 18-30 have a 60% chance of being diagnosed mentally ill. Discuss.

[Monetary Wonk @MonetaryWonk]

Learn something new every day. I’m NOT a conservative FWIW.