Authored by Zack Voell via BitcoinMagazine.com,

Inscribing bits of data onto the Bitcoin blockchain through Ordinals has captured the attention of cryptocurrency enthusiasts inside and beyond Bitcoin since the start of 2023.

Whether or not Bitcoin “should” be used for this NFT-like activity is a hotly-contested issue and the data coming from the effects of this mini Bitcoin collectives craze is intriguing. Inscriptions could be a short-lived fad, but several early data sets from the first weeks of inscription activity show tremendous interest in this new use case for the Bitcoin network. Diving in, this article provides an overview of six sets of data from the inscription mania.

OVERVIEW OF BITCOIN INSCRIPTIONS DATA

The amounts and weights of pending transactions in Bitcoin mempools around the world are a clear signal of how popular inscription transactions have been to Bitcoin users amid the ongoing mini-craze over Bitcoin NFTs. Throughout most of the current bear market cycle, pending transaction levels in Bitcoin mempools have stayed fairly low, especially when compared to the height of both the 2017 and 2021 bull markets. In fact, a Twitter bot called Mempool Alert tweets every time its mempool empties, and the tweets were posted on a consistent basis for months throughout 2022.

The mempool pending transactions visual below shows the total weight of unconfirmed transactions throughout most of February 2023. The surge in pending transactions directly correlates to the inscriptions craze, which has somewhat subsided toward the end of February.

Source

Inscription transactions are notoriously large, and the block sizes that have come from the inscription craze prove it. For years, the sizes of Bitcoin blocks hovered just below 1.5 megabytes (MB) as the line chart below illustrates. But the vertical increase in block sizes on the far right side of the chart is due entirely to Bitcoin inscriptions.

With these Bitcoin NFTs becoming popular, blocks started being produced between 2 MB and 2.5 MB on average. Several blocks flirted with the 4 MB limit, including the “giant” Taproot Wizard block mined by Luxor in collaboration with Udi Wertheimer and others.

Switching to a bit of “off-chain” data, the interest in Bitcoin inscriptions is also apparent from Google Search queries. The line chart below is taken from the Google Trends page for search interest in “Bitcoin Ordinals,” and the near-vertical increase in interest over time is impossible to miss. It should be noted that these search trends data sets are scored on a relative basis to search interest in weeks and years past. But of particular noteworthiness is that Google Trends has indexed this phrase at all. Not every term or phrase is indexed by Google Trends, only those with a material amount of minimum search volume over time. That trending data for “Bitcoin Ordinals” made the database at all is remarkable.

Critics of NFTs — and especially of inscriptions on Bitcoin — will occasionally slight the entire type of network use as a form of “privilege” by elites in developed countries goofing around with a serious monetary network. But global trends for Ordinals searches don’t show the U.S. as even a top-five country. Singapore, Czechia, Portugal and Singapore top the list, according to Google’s data.

Sorting by transaction forms included in blocks also illustrates the intensity of the inscriptions craze that kicked off 2023 for Bitcoin. According to data shared to Twitter from a Bitcoin node run by Pierre Rochard, the research director at Riot Blockchain, inscription transactions accounted for nearly 60% of block space near the height of the Bitcoin community’s first foray into Ordinals. As the data visualization below illustrates, that number steadily grew from 20% to 60% within a week.

Community data from groups of inscriptions enthusiasts also present some additional context for this social and technical movement inside of Bitcoin. The bar chart below represents data compiled by OrdinalHub with a list of original inscription Discord groups and their member counts as of early February.

By a large margin, Satoshibles and Taproot Wizards were the largest communities at that point in time. But the sheer number of Discord groups that almost instantaneously were created signals the passion that Bitcoin artists have had for this new use for the network.

At present, many of the Discords are certainly larger than the data in the above chart represent. But by now, some of the data is sure to have been corrupted by bots and various other spoofs (intentional or not) of community data, which makes this data snapshot taken near the communities origins unique.

One final piece of data that deserves inclusion in any analysis of Bitcoin inscriptions is around the money — how much miners are making from “the inscribeoooors” who etch their bits of data into the Bitcoin network. Miners are being paid handsomely for building blocks with inscription transactions.

In the line-bar combination chart shown below, daily amounts spent on inscription transaction fees and the total aggregate amount paid to miners from inscription transactions are visualized. In a few short weeks, well over $1 million has been paid out to miners from inscribers. And this data only captures the on-chain payments — out-of-band payments are not included here, which would make the number somewhat larger.

Even though much of the early data sets show that the intensity of early inscription activity has tapered off relative to its highs toward the end of February, how long this trend will last is unknown. It could be a fad that dies out before the current bear market ends, and inscription critics can then dance on the grave of Bitcoin NFTs. Or it could become a longstanding fixture of demand for block space and regular fee revenue for miners.

The future is uncertain, but the possible effects of inscriptions are impossible to ignore.

Now that soaring rates have burst the commercial real estate bubble, the carnage is coming fast and furious.

This morning Bloomberg reports that Wall Street’s largest commercial real estate landlord, private equity giant Blackstone, has defaulted on a €531 million ($562 million) bond backed by a portfolio of offices and stores owned by Sponda Oy, a Finnish landlord it acquired in 2018.

While the PE firm had sought an extension from holders of the securitized notes to allow time to dispose of assets and repay the debt, the surge in market volatility triggered by the war in Ukraine and rising interest rates interrupted the sales process and bondholders voted against a further extension, the Bloomberg sources said.

And since the security has now matured and has not been repaid, loan servicer Mount Street has determined that an event of default has occurred, according to a statement Thursday. The loan will now be transferred to a special servicer.

“This debt relates to a small portion of the Sponda portfolio,” a Blackstone representative said in an emailed statement. “We are disappointed that the servicer has not advanced our proposal, which reflects our best efforts and we believe would deliver the best outcome for note holders. We continue to have full confidence in the core Sponda portfolio and its management team, whose priority remains delivering high-quality retail and office assets.”

And while Blackstone is understandably trying to minimize the news, the PE firm clearly continues to scramble to stabilize the bleeding in its massive real estate portfolio and on Wednesday it said that it had blocked investors from cashing out their investments at its $71 billion real estate income trust (BREIT), as the private equity firm continues to grapple with a flurry of redemption requests.

BREIT said it fulfilled redemption requests of $1.4 billion in February, which represents only 35% of the approximately $3.9 billion in total withdrawal requests for the month, the firm said in a letter to investors as Reuters first reported.

The silver lining is that the total BREIT redemption requests in February were 26% lower than the approximately $5.3 billion reached in January, the firm said. However, should rates keep rising it is likely that the March redemption flood will be higher again.

“While gross redemptions for February are consistent with prior management commentary, the overarching data continue to align with our view around decelerating retail-oriented product organic growth broadly,” Credit Suisse analysts, led by Bill Katz, said in a note to investors. As we previously reported, Blackstone has been exercising its right to block investors’ withdrawals since November last year after requests hit a preset 5% net asset value of BREIT, which is marketed to mostly high net worth individuals.

Credit Suisse downgraded its rating of Blackstone’s stock to underperform in November partly because of the rise in investor redemptions from BREIT. Blackstone’s shares were down 0.25% at $90.57 per share in afternoon trading on Wednesday. The stock lost 43% of its value last year.

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

The US State Department-funded Global Disinformation Index punished conservative websites by throttling their advertising revenue if they gave credence to the COVID-19 lab leak theory, despite it subsequently proving likely true.

The Global Disinformation Index is a British-based non-profit group that previously received $665,000 from the Global Engagement Center and National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a State Department-backed group, while it was overseeing censorship of “conspiracy theories” about COVID-19.

One of these conspiracy theories was the notion that COVID-19 originated from a lab leak in Wuhan, which GDI claimed had “been fact-checked and proven untrue.”

GDI abused its influence to pressure Big Tech firms like Google to cut advertising from conservative websites that pushed the lab leak theory, placing them on a secret blacklist called a “dynamic exclusion list” in an effort to put them out of business.

The group targeted firms that were “providing ad revenue streams to known disinformation sites peddling coronavirus conspiracies.”

Microsoft later had to suspend its partnership with the group after the GDI had been using the company’s Xandr advertising and analytics subsidiary to freeze out conservative sites.

From 2021 onwards, the lab leak theory was no longer being treated as a “conspiracy theory,” and both the Department of Energy and the FBI recently came out and asserted it was likely true.

“GDI is part of [a] disturbing constellation of pop-up censorship organizations that all descended on stifling COVID origins discourse online simultaneously,” Mike Benz, a former State Department official told the Washington Examiner.

This once again underscores how hysteria over ‘fake news’ and ‘disinformation’ has been weaponized to justify the censorship of awkward stories and even facilitate actual cover-ups.

As we highlighted yesterday, the Chinese Communist Party threatened Elon Musk to stop sharing stories about the Wuhan lab leak, suggesting Tesla’s business interests in China would be at risk if he kept amplifying the issue.

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A top union leader penned a letter to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg about a number of rail workers at the Norfolk Southern derailment site in East Palestine, Ohio, who have become sick, likely from the toxic chemical spill. CNBC obtained the letter on Wednesday. 

Jonathan Long, a union representative for the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, titled the letter “Norfolk Southern Is Dangerous to America” and said about 40 workers were ordered by the railway to clean up the wreckage. 

Long said workers weren’t given proper personal protection equipment to clean up the toxic wreckage. He said many workers weren’t supplied respirators, protective clothing, or eye protection. 

As a result of the chemical exposure, many rail workers “reported that they continue to experience migraines and nausea, days after the derailment, and they all suspect that they were willingly exposed to these chemicals at the direction of [Norfolk Southern].”

Long added, “This lack of concern for the workers’ safety and well-being is, again, a basic tenet of NS’s cost-cutting business model.”

Norfolk Southern released a statement to CNBC about the cleanup effort. They said:

Norfolk was “on-scene immediately after the derailment and coordinated our response with hazardous material professionals who were on site continuously to ensure the work area was safe to enter and the required PPE was utilized, all in addition to air monitoring that was established within an hour.”

Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, and the Biden administration have ensured adequate measures have been taken to protect residents and surrounding communities from the toxic chemical spill and controlled burn of vinyl chloride. 

But perhaps the EPA and government aren’t telling rail workers and residents the truth. That’s because rail workers are getting sick, residents complain about health issues, and animals in state parks are dying. 

Authored by Simon White, Bloomberg macro strategist,

The risk of a structural rise in yields has heightened as bondholders begin to demand more compensation for inflation that is increasingly ingrained.

For all the opprobrium heaped on markets for being unruly and disobedient, they’ve been remarkably pliant in believing central banks will soon return inflation to 2%. The bond vigilantes (apart from a brief appearance during the UK’s LDI crisis) have been extraordinary only by their absence.

But that looks as if it is about to change. Term premium, essentially the extra yield long-term bond holders require for inflation risks, has been rising as data show the disinflation trend in the US running out of steam, helping push 10-year yields back over 4%.

In fact, over the last six months we have seen more extreme daily rises (i.e. those in the top 0.5% of all daily moves going back to 1960) in term premium than we have since the early 1980s, when Fed Governor Volcker was in the last throes of his conclusive battle with inflation.

Term premium captures several risks for holders of long-term bonds, but key is inflation.

The 10-year ACM term premium spent most of the 1970s above 1%, and peaked at 5% in 1984. Since then it has trended consistently lower, and has remained surprisingly contained over the last few years despite inflation hitting multi-decade highs.

The disconnect can be seen most clearly by looking at the precipitous rise in the volatility of inflation – which captures the extra uncertainty bond holders are facing – and still-subdued term premium.

The implications are considerable if bond holders are worrying inflation is becoming embedded. Most immediately, yields would be biased structurally higher, and would decline less when the Fed cuts rates, lowering the control the central bank has over longer-term borrowing costs.

This was the invidious position in which Volcker found himself in the early 1980s. The Fed at that point had “imperfect credibility”: when it hiked rates, the market did not believe it would keep them there. Instead, it was forced to cut them again when the ensuing recession hit. This meant inflation persisting, term premium rising, and the yield curve steepening – even as the Fed was hiking rates aggressively.

It was only when Volcker raised rates to 20% in 1981 – despite a deep recession – that the deadlock was finally broken and inflation began to fall. Nonetheless, term premium did not peak until three years later as the market remained wary the inflation beast had not been decisively floored. Once bond markets scent inflation, it takes years before they become desensitized to it.

Rising term premium also risks a self-reinforcing feedback loop. When it is increasing, the yield curve has a steepening bias, and steeper yield curves go hand-in-hand with higher rate volatility.

This is because longer-term forward yields must converge to shorter-term yields. The steeper the yield curve, the more paths yields can take to converge, which means higher yield volatility. Higher volatility means bond holders demand a higher yield to compensate, i.e. term premium rises.

Avoiding a rise in term premium is thus highly desirable. But the cat may already be out of the bag. Term premium looks to be catching up to the much higher level currently implied by forecasters.

There is no binding constraint that the forecasters’ view need be correct, but inflation is a social and behavioral phenomenon as much as an economic one. At some point, inflation expectations become self-fulfilling and drive inflation itself. An emerging narrative that inflation is becoming persistent adds to the likelihood that that is what we will soon see.

And inflation expectations are already rising at the fastest rate in decades. As the chart below shows, this adds further confidence to the notion that term premium will keep rising.

A structural, term-premium driven rise in yields could take years to reverse as hitherto dormant bond vigilantes become conditioned to a world where inflation is persistently elevated and prone to sudden flare-ups.

It would also mean an end to the uneasy alliance between central banks and markets fostered over the last four decades. Term premium thus bears watching very closely.

Mainstream media correspondents for major US networks rarely, if ever, report from inside Crimea and certainly are nowhere near Russian-held territory in eastern Ukraine. However, this week NBC News chief international correspondent Keir Simmons went to Sevastopol, surrounded by a significant Russian military presence given it is home to the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet, and in a live segment admitted that it’s not at all realistic Zelensky and Ukrainian forces can ever hope to take Crimea. 

This is especially as the “the people there… view themselves as Russian.” Simmons noted that “This is the closest that any US news crew has got to the Russian Black Sea Fleet in many many years.” He explained that “Vladimir Putin will be determined to defend that port – to not have it take it away from him – he may well do pretty much anything to try to achieve that.”

BREAKING: NBC News / MSNBC concedes that Zelensky’s goal of retaking Crimea is unrealistic and dangerous.pic.twitter.com/fb2RCRBHOn

— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) March 1, 2023

“It is a very, very dangerous standoff.. it’s hard to see how you reach a negotiation over that. There’s military absolutely everywhere, it is a military town,” he continued, before saying…

“When for example Victoria Nuland talks about that at the very least we [the US] want Crimea to be demilitarized, I find myself standing there and wondering, how on earth does that happen?“

Ukrainian officials and pro-Kyiv media pundits are said to be outraged at the segment, given it repeatedly and bluntly referenced that Crimeans see themselves as Russians. Even a separate write-up filed days earlier from inside Crimea and posted to NBC’s website included the following: 

This is not Russia, according to Kyiv, its Western allies and the United Nations. It was annexed by the Kremlin in 2014, with the U.N. calling on Russia to return to its “internationally recognized borders.” And following Moscow’s broader invasion launched a year ago, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has vowed Ukraine will take Crimea back.

But Praskovya Baranova, 73, speaks Russian, feels Russian and lives here.

But it appears that the NBC correspondent, once he was on the ground in a place that few Western reporters ever venture, couldn’t deny the plain truth he was seeing all around him.

NBC told Americans the truth about Crimea for the first time and its reporter wound up on the Ukrainian government’s kill list alongside several other US citizens, journos, clergy and even children.

Will NBC now report on this list? Will “press freedom” groups denounce it? https://t.co/rHLxjYdqos

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) March 2, 2023

David Sacks comments of the refreshingly truthful segment, “Not long ago, these were denounced as Putin talking points.” 

Sacks also says regarding NBC clearly conceding that Zelensky’s goal of retaking Crimea remains unrealistic and dangerous…

This is a huge admission because it means that Biden’s policy of “only the Ukrainians can decide” the objectives of the war makes no sense. We’re effectively delegating our foreign policy to Zelensky, who is pursuing objectives that we don’t agree with.

“At the same time that MSNBC is suddenly airing the truth about Crimea, its chief Ukraine pundit is lobbying for an all-out attack,” Sacks also observes of the timing of the mid-week report.

“It’s getting easier to see who are the real fanatics in this war,” Sacks concluded.

With futures sinking for a third day and set to take out the 200dma (S&P cash at 3938), traders are bracing for a potential air pocket lower in today’s session, one which could drag stocks sharply lower if 3900 is also taken out. And while we will have more to say about the technicals in a follow up post, here is a quick snapshot from the trading desk of the largest US bank, JPMorgan.

We start with the overnight market snapshot from JPM index trader Jason Hunter who writes that the move lower can accelerate rapidly if key support around 3,900 is taken out:

The S&P 500 Index slide from anticipated resistance in the 4100s threatens key chart levels surrounding 3900. A move through that support has the strong potential to accelerate bearish price pressures, in our view. Other markets that have been sensitive to the China rebound story are testing key chart levels as well. A break there has the potential to feedback into western markets as global macro sentiment may sour.

Even after the recent setback, the S&P 500 Index still looks overvalued relative to the shape of the money market curve. We have used versions of regression models based on that relationship to not only show the limited upside for the index (4100-4200 resistance), but also show asymmetric downside risk that is still present on the residual chart.

An 18-month relationship that uses the expected terminal rate and overall amount of easing priced after terminal rate is achieved currently shows the index fair value just below 3800. A retest of the 3491 4Q22 low would roughly equate to 2 standard deviations oversold, all else equal. That study has a 0.75 r-squared and 160pt standard error.

And here is some additional color from JPM TMT trader Ron Adler who notes that “This tape is nearing max frustration” to wit:

This tape is nearing max frustration. The desk and TMT are again very balanced from a flow perspective. We continue to see LO demand in the MegaCap, some idiosyncratic positioning in software ahead of tonight. A TON of paper hit the market (I believe ~$2.9B), and this doesn’t account for the heightened VC distributions seen as windows open post earnings. Yields are the issue today (though the dollar is not reacting in tow, though EUR/USD is stronger); still, all things considered, the market is hanging in ok (famous last words)

The red headline guy has almost hit the “send” button on the “10-year yields hit 4% for the first time since November 2022” headline 17 times today. Growth investors anxiously await that catalyst to sell the stocks they sold in November again (you know, the same ones they subsequently bought in January). That trigger finger is very, very itchy.

APP BASED DELIVERY | Received a few questions on the NYC Minimum wage issue. Remember that time when NYC said it would decide about a minimum wage for delivery workers by February 15, then on February 15 changed the language on the website to say it “now expects to issue a final rule by February 2023.” Today is March 1. I haven’t seen anything yet (language on the website still says end of February .

Finally, as a bonus, here are the key factors that Goldman’s equity desk is focusing on:

• DESK ACTIVITY… B/S skew on the floor finished roughly flat. LOs finished 320bps better to buy driven by mega-cap tech and ETFs (ETF volumes tracked ~36% of the tape). HFs finished 415bps better to buy, with notable buy skews in HC and tech. Continue to see corporates and sponsors monetize in block form – desk saw blocks in OPCH & HAYW post close
• CHINA…China will make a push at the G20 foreign ministers meeting on Thurs for peace talks to commence in the Ukraine war, but Washington is very skeptical Russia has any intention to negotiate in good faith and end its aggression – NYT.
• PB ONE LINERS…Looking back on Feb: Overall Prime book saw the largest notional net selling in 8 months (-1.2 SDs one-year), driven by elevated short sales outpacing long buys ~4 to 1. Single Stocks were net bought for a 3rd straight month and saw the largest notional net buying in 5 months (+0.9 SDs one-year), driven by risk-on flows with long buys outpacing short sales ~6.5 to 1 (in contrast to January during which short covering dominated the flows).
• GEOPOLITICAL TENSIONS…Tensions continue to simmer, reportedly the US is sounding out close allies about the possibility of imposing new sanctions on China if Beijing provides military support to Russia for its war in Ukraine. However, on the bright side the WSJ reports that a senior Treasury Department official recently traveled to Beijing and met with Chinese counterparts for technical, staff-level discussions on macroeconomic and financial issues. Meanwhile, China’s Vice Minister of Commerce said his country is willing to conduct candid talks with the US to reduce trade and investment restrictions, in order to implement consensus reached by leaders of the two countries in Bali. (TY Fred Yin).
• CTAs…Updated numbers: In a flat tape ($27B for SALE – $20B in SPX).
• 10 YEAR YLDS…3.4% to start Feb…4.08% currently…

The Kremlin has condemned what it called a new terrorist attack on its soil Thursday carried out by Ukrainian saboteurs who allegedly breached a border region. 

Russian presidency spokesman Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said militants entered the Bryansk Oblast in Western Russia and attacked villages there, resulting in the death of one civilian and another wounded. “This is an attack by terrorists,” Peskov said.

Conflicting initial reports indicated Russia’s Federal Security Service engaged in a gun battle with  the infiltrators, with the Kremlin saying “Measures are currently underway to eliminate these terrorists.”

The Associated Press describes based on national media that “Tass, citing Russian law enforcement, reported earlier that the saboteurs were holding up to six people hostage.”

“The local governor said the group had fired on a vehicle there, killing one man and wounding a 10-year-old,” AP continues. The report details further:

Thursday’s apparent incursion was also embarrassing for Russian President Vladimir Putin, coming days after he ordered the Federal Security Service to tighten controls on Russia’s border with Ukraine.

Tass reported, citing an unnamed security official, that two villages in the Bryansk region — Sushany and Lyubechane — were under attack by “several dozen armed fighters.”

Alexander Bogomaz, the governor of the Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine, said the group fired on a vehicle in Lyubechane, killing one man and wounding a child. He also said that a Ukrainian drone struck a house in the Sushany, setting it ablaze.

Multiple war monitoring accounts have picked up on the below video which is widely being flagged as showing one of the alleged attackers:

🚨BREAKING: A Ukrainian terrorist attack is underway in Bryansk, Russia.

The attackers said on video they wouldn’t kill civilians, but there are reports of hostages and mass casualties.

President Putin has convened an emergency meeting of the Security Council. 🚨 pic.twitter.com/Zfi74Y80c8

— Clint Ehrlich (@ClintEhrlich) March 2, 2023

Peskov said in response to a question over what action Moscow could take in the international arena, “On the international arena, [we] have drawn and continue drawing the attention of the world public to those terror attacks that these people [Ukrainian terrorists] carry out.”

Putin also directly addressed the cross-border terror attack in a video address after convening his national security council to be briefed on the matter…

“They opened fire on civilians,… they saw that there were children in the car,” Putin said.

⚡️Putin called what happened today in the Bryansk region a terrorist attack pic.twitter.com/XXHpevnUir

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) March 2, 2023

The incident comes after Monday into Tuesday a series of drone attacks on Russian facilities, believed launched by the Ukrainians, triggered air alert sirens in various locations across the country. One or more even reached to within 100km of Moscow. 

Concerning the drone attacks, Russia’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs has charged that the Ukrainians had covert help from the United States in carrying out the sophisticated drone operations, one of which damaged an oil facility some 500km inside Russian territory. “Attack of drones on aviation facilities in Saratov and Ryazan could not have been carried out without the active assistance of the United States,” Ryabkov said in a press statement.

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

So sorry, but the lifestyle of low-cost credit and all the goodies it could buy is permanently out of stock.

In focusing on geopolitics, we lose sight of the dependence of every economy on a functioning global economy of low-cost goods, services, materials, shipping, transport, capital, labor and financial instruments, all flowing freely across borders and around the world.

Russia, China, the U.S., and indeed every economy are equally dependent on access to a functioning global economy to obtain essential goods, services and capital and sell surplus production.

The irony here is the “poor” subsistence villagers with very limited access to global markets will manage the breakdown of the global economy far better than the “wealthy” urban dwellers who are totally dependent on free-flowing global trade. (The villagers will be frustrated by spotty cell service; the urban dwellers will be hard-pressed to obtain enough food and fuel to survive.)

What few seem to realize (or acknowledge) is the forces already in motion will upend the global economy, and there is no reverse gear. These forces are:

1. De-globalization

2. De-financialization

3. Real-world scarcities that cannot be overcome with financial trickery.

4. Diminishing returns on what worked in the past: financial stimulus and other trickery.

5. Asymmetries that can no longer be papered over.

Each of these forces is multi-faceted and complex. Each has the unstoppable momentum of cause and effect. The financial trickery of the past 30 years has created a delusional faith that there are no real-world scarcities or difficulties that can’t be resolved with some new financial stimulus or gimmick. This is a compelling delusion, for we all want magic that makes the real world do what suits us.

The central delusion is that “money” (credit/currency) from somewhere can magically extract as many materials and goodies as we want from somewhere else. This is hyper-globalization and hyper-financialization in a nutshell: hyper-financialization is the global commoditization of credit, leverage and trickery, enabling the vast expansion of credit, leverage and trickery which has fueled the astounding expansion of speculative frenzy which is now the engine of the global economy.

Hyper-globalization is the fulfillment of the neoliberal fantasy that commoditizing self-regulating (ha-ha, you mean cartels and monopolies, correct?) markets would permanently lower costs and expand credit, consumption and prosperity. In this hyper-version of global trade (which has existed for thousands of years), the mass commoditization of credit and capital flowing freely around the world, plucking (and exploiting) the most profitable opportunities wherever they might be (luxury resort in Timbukthree, count us in, at least until we can find a sucker to buy our commoditized debt instruments) will all by itself lower costs and boost production and consumption forever.

Nice, but financial trickery eventually runs into real-world constraints and asymmetries it cannot resolve. Once the cheap-to-get resources have been depleted, it costs more to extract, process and transport them, even with technological advances.

Other constraints are economic, political and social in nature. Local populaces eventually realize their resources are being plundered by corporations from afar who arbitrage vast asymmetries in the cost of capital, labor costs, environmental standards and currency valuations (to name a few) to stripmine locals and leave them the “dividends” of hyper-globalization and hyper-financialization such as polluted wastelands and unpayable debts.

Nations eventually awaken to the risks of becoming dependent on others for essentials, and so onshoring, friend-shoring and reshoring all become national-defense policies, never mind the corrupting neoliberal fantasies of everyone singing Kumbaya around the hyper-globalization and hyper-financialization campfire.

Creating a billion units of currency doesn’t automatically conjure up a billion units of fresh water, wheat or oil. When there were unexploited reserves of these essentials, then massive infusions of capital from somewhere else could fund their extraction, but when the easy-to-get reserves have been depleted, then cheap capital doesn’t translate into cheap goodies.

The reversal of these forces has a funny consequence which we call inflation. Let’s start by setting aside economic fantasies such as “inflation is always a monetary phenomenon.” If a primary source of oil happens to be blown to bits and oil jumps $50 a barrel overnight, costs will rise in a manner that has nothing to do with the expansion or contraction of the money supply. “Inflation” is simply this: a unit of labor / currency buys fewer goods and services, or buys goods and services of lower quality.

However you wish to put it, labor and money lose purchasing power: each unit of labor/currency buys less than it did in the past.

Inflation has many sources, but let’s focus on the reversal of hyper-globalization and hyper-financialization. The reversal of financialization increases the cost of capital (interest rates, cost of mitigating rising risk) and the reversal of globalization increases the costs of goods and services.

The global realities of depletion and scarcity also push costs higher.

Simply put, each of these forces is highly inflationary as a matter of cause and effect. There is no way to conjure a hat-trick of financial gimmicks to reverse these forces of higher costs, i.e. inflation: every unit of labor and currency buys less than it did in the past.

Authorities have been trained by the golden decades of abundance and low costs to do more of what worked in the past, i.e. financial stimulus of one kind or another. Just flood the land with credit and currency, and the magic will fix whatever is broken or hobbling.

But the returns on these artifices have diminished to the point that the gimmicks are not just failing, they are actively making the problems worse. Thanks to the globalization of “The Fed Put,” moral hazard is now the context of every global financial decision. Financial stimulus inflates speculative bubbles, which inevitably pop, generating waves of distress which additional waves of financial stimulus only accelerate.

The notion that speculative bubbles can painlessly fuel abundance and prosperity is bankrupt, and the collapse of this appealing delusion will collapse the entire global structure of hyper-financialization.

In a delicious irony, stimulus in any form is now inflationary. Doing more of what worked in the past will now accelerate the “problem” central banks and governments are trying to solve: inflation. This reality drives a stake through the heart of all the hopes that doing more of what worked in the past will magically work, even as it adds fuel to the bonfire of higher costs.

Lastly, there is a broad spectrum of destabilizing asymmetries which can no longer be papered over with gimmicks. These include (but are not limited to) profound asymmetries in risk premiums, liquidity and valuations, resource reserves, political stability, dependencies on global markets for buyers of last resort and so on.

The bottom line is there are few if any nations that could survive intact should hyper-globalization and hyper-financialization collapse and scarcities increase. As I explained in Weaponizing Global Depression, real-world resources and financial, poltical and social systems that are transparent and adaptable are the necessary foundations for the shift from dependence to self-reliance.

So sorry, but the lifestyle of low-cost credit and all the goodies it could buy is permanently out of stock. The banquet of consequences is being served even if no one has the appetite for what is about to be forced down their throats by constraint, asymmetries and cause-and-effect.

New Podcast: Turmoil Ahead As We Enter The New Era Of ‘Scarcity’ (53 min)

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My new book is now available at a 10% discount ($8.95 ebook, $18 print): Self-Reliance in the 21st Century.

Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

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Despite the ongoing headlines of layoffs across all industries, US jobless claims data continues to refuse to show anything but an extremely strong labor market, with initial claims at 190k last week (better than the 195k expected) and continuing claims at 1.655mm (below the 1.669mm expected)

Source: Bloomberg

Kentucky and California saw the biggest drop in claims while Massachusetts and Rhode Island saw the largest rise…

The total number of Americans on some form of unemployment benefits continues to hover around one-year highs…

Source: Bloomberg

More problematically for Powell and his pals, unit labor costs for Q4 (final) printed +3.2% QoQ (double the expected 1.6% rise), up for the 7th quarter in a row.

Source: Bloomberg

We’re gonna need a bigger rate-hike!