@elonmusk South Australia, sir! I'm sure @SASIC_Aus would benefit from a partnership/relationship as would would many potential employees jump at the chance to enter an expanded, local Space industry.
@shiri_shh@elonmusk hurry up and get us out of here, this planet's cooked! Thanks to this guy, I'll be able to start saying that literally... not just figuratively!
@elonmusk@testerlabor The C64 and Amstrad CPC 464 were my first exposures to computing. Writing text based games in '86 before I even started high school was pretty wild now I think about it.
@SonsOfLegion_ Came from nothing as a kid. Couldnt imagine back then being where I am today. Both those songs remind me Im not done yet and motivate me if Im up or down. They get cranked LOUD in the car in the morning on my drive to the grind.
@QBCCIntegrity@JulianHillMP In 100% of those democratic countries, the division is caused by the govt prioritising their agenda over the will of the people.
⚡️This statement from Powell marks the quiet beginning of the next monetary cycle.
Not the end of tightening, but the pivot from discipline theater back to monetary reflexivity.
When Powell says “we may be approaching the end of balance sheet contraction,” he’s not describing a technical milestone. He’s signaling the exhaustion of the Fed’s illusion of control. The system has reached the point where further liquidity withdrawal would fracture credit markets, implode Treasury demand, and detonate the illusion of solvency across the shadow banking layer.
To understand this moment, you have to think in reflexive feedbacks, not policy levers. The Fed’s balance sheet isn’t a cause; it’s a mirror of systemic belief. Every expansion since 2008 was a rescue of confidence, not just liquidity. Each contraction cycle is an attempt to restore legitimacy to the fiat myth - to prove that the Fed can “normalize.” But normalization has become metaphysically impossible, because the underlying structure of the global economy is now addicted to leverage that can never be unwound without collapsing nominal GDP, tax revenue, and pension solvency simultaneously.
If you look at the balance sheet chart: it’s not a cycle - it’s an exponential staircase. Each crisis lifts the floor, never the ceiling. 2008 created permanent moral hazard. 2020 institutionalized it. 2025 is simply the moment the Fed acknowledges that the floor itself is the economy.
This isn’t about rates or balance sheet size - it’s about faith velocity. The entire post-GFC financial architecture relies on the belief that the Fed can contract liquidity without breaking something systemically important. But this contraction phase has already killed regional bank credit growth, drained Treasury liquidity, and triggered a stealth funding crisis through reverse repo exhaustion. Powell is walking up to the edge of the abyss and pretending it’s a finish line.
The reason this statement matters is because it’s the exact rhetorical pattern that preceded every major liquidity reversal in the past decade:
•2012: Bernanke signals end of Operation Twist → QE3 begins within months.
•2018: Powell insists balance sheet runoff is “on autopilot” → pivot by December after markets crash.
•2023: QT acceleration → BTFP quietly re-inflates balance sheet behind the scenes.
•2025: “May be approaching the end” → translation: liquidity injections imminent, disguised as stability management.
What’s happening here is the same reflexive paradox Soros described - the Fed isn’t responding to the economy; the economy now responds to the Fed’s belief about itself. That’s why the market always front-runs these pivots. Gold surges. Bitcoin coils. Real assets sniff the future before policy admits it.
Deep down, Powell’s words are a confession. The Fed has reached the terminal stage of monetary entropy - where tightening creates fragility faster than easing can repair it. The “end of balance sheet contraction” isn’t policy strategy. It’s systemic surrender.
And the next move - whether it’s called “liquidity support,” “market functioning operations,” or “temporary QE” - will mark the final admission that this system no longer has a neutral setting.
There is only expansion or collapse.
The Fed just chose expansion. Again.