Russian rouble hits one-year lows against major currencies (reuters.com)
‘To think about your fellow man, you really have to, to be a businessman, you have to think about your consumer, your clients, you have to care about them, it makes it the most virtuous form of economic organization. ... When you, through inflation, turn a businessman who was a pillar of the community into a profiteer, you have destroyed his standing and even his self-respect, because he starts thinking "Well I have to raise prices, but am I the villain." So it's just an awful way to shift blame. ‘Labor doesn’t cause inflation, business doesn't cause inflation, government causes inflation.'
Judy Shelton: Money and Inflation in the New Trump Era (youtube.com)
‘Money should be a reliable measure’ and not inflated so people lose their property (purchasing power).' ‘Monetary favoritism' of those who already have assets.
What does ‘stable prices’ mean? They have reinterpreted that to mean ‘stable inflation' rather than stable cost.
If inflation takes 20% of people's savings when they want to use it 10 years later, is that expropriation?
‘Money is a moral contract.’ What a pound is, what an inch is, what the currency is.
Can money be decoupled from the whims of politicians? People are ‘too accepting’.
Is the government mandate 0% inflation? Money illusion. Since people would never want to not get a raise, or even have their wages go down slightly, government needs to camelflage what they're really doing. Give the people a 1% increase in their wages and give them 4% inflation. Over half of people polled would be happy with such a raise. Economists said they wouldn't be happy with that.
There might be a change in how people secure their money. Crypto and assets like stocks. Tired of being told inflation is fine.
The Founders had gold and silver in mind when they were thinking about the US legal tender. ‘If the dollar is our money unit then we must say with precision what a dollar is.’ It was 4 grains of gold or 25 grains of silver, in 1784 when Jefferson was thinking about this. That was how a country fit into an international monetary system, a level playing field.
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S&P at 25p/e (BigTech at 31p/e), and a year ago it was 20. Buffet is still hoarding cash, very steep increase in percentage to current 25%.
DOGE is planning on not being a department, but a temporary thing. And they're planning to have streamed weekly meetings where they talk about the best ideas anyone has to cut government expenses.
Tariffs can be a way to compete against countries that let their currencies be devalued against the USD. China, Japan. 'If we had a level playing field, we could eliminate those tarifs.' The benefits of international trade, not the negative exploitations.
Archegos Hwang got ‘18 years’.
Target's value message is not as strong as Walmart's, hence divergence, says BCI Brands' Chirico (youtube.com)
Something a lot of people are trying to figure out. Is Walmart or Target the outlyer?
Food and household goods categories, Walmart signals to the consumer better.
Target has overinventoried, clearing new goods not great, over last 3 years.