Trump chasing imaginary oil supplies, Big Tech chasing an imaginary AI deity, and wannabe Fed chairs chasing an imaginary productivity boom. My new year's resolution of not getting angry about bullshit narratives is not going to last long

What are you 3 big macro questions for 2026? Mine: 1. Will the AI bubble burst? 2. Will US employment contract, or reaccelerate? 3. What will the post-Powell Fed look like?

This would make a great show, except its obvious who the traitors are from the start - basically anyone who would take the job as chair rn 🤣

🧵Things that wont happen in 2026. some "hilariously" bold off-consensus forecasts

3. GERMAN FISCAL GOES TOO FAR

5) THE K-SHAPED ECONOMY

So basically we cant trust them, whoever it is. Anyone who wants the job under these conditions.....

Kevin Hassett looks exactly like Alan Carr

🧵Things that wont happen in 2026. some "hilariously" bold off-consensus forecasts

NEW BLOG POST: bold non-consensus predictions for 2026. How the K-shaped economy goes wrong. FOMC traitors. My new rap career. Germany takes fiscal spending too far, and why the Digital God cant save us. No paywall (unless admin screwed this up AGAIN). hub.tslombard.com/things-that-...

NEW BLOG POST: bold non-consensus predictions for 2026. How the K-shaped economy goes wrong. FOMC traitors. My new rap career. Germany takes fiscal spending too far, and why the Digital God cant save us. No paywall (unless admin screwed this up AGAIN). hub.tslombard.com/things-that-...

1% of GDP more debt gets you 1 bp on the term premium. Seems like a good deal 🤣

Other problems were the truncated survey itself, which included 1/2 of the month. The survey was started on November 14, after vote to reopen on November 12. That meant the data for the months likely included more holiday promotions than usual.

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George Osborne, new managing director of OpenAi. You couldn't make it up. Peak is in 🤣

Powell said if employment is contracting, you dont want policy to be pushing it lower. SOMEONE HAVE A WORD WITH THE BOE

Lots of commentary over the weekend about how the Bessent-Warsh combination will kick off a new era of anti-Keynesian supply-side economics. What people are forgetting is that these guys are total bullshitters

Kevin Warsh says he was "right" about QE but it took 11 years for it to cause runaway inflation. Seeing as it took Kevin Hassett 21 years to hit his 1999 target for the US stock market, I guess he *should* probably get the job 🏆💪

Useful

Is the Fed policy rate at the right level to control inflation? Literally the only question that is relevant in this entire "monetization" debate. The rest is noise and conspiracy theories

Today's note, Ten popular myths in macro, is probably going to get me kicked out of the magical circle of City economists. Its all about "bullshit" narratives everyone seems to believe 🤣

Asked whether Hassett was Trump's choice for Fed chair, Bessent played down the importance of the role. SO THAT'S A YES THEN 🤣

Extremely good stuff from @darioperkins.bsky.social on Perkins v Beamish this week. overcast.fm/+ABKrk8yGXIo

PODCAST TIME: The BoE-fication of the Fed. A world of dissent. cock up or CONSPIRACY? usually this sort of thing is a cock up, but this time.... Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t... Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/04MK...

so #Budget2026 taxes a bit more, spends a bit more.. net mildly contractionary.. but no extra squeeze until the end of the parliament (which presumably wont happen). That's it? thanks for saving us having to watch it OBR - first useful thing you've done

Large language models are statistical token-prediction systems, and despite AGI claims by Mark Zuckerberg, Dario Amodei (who said AGI "may come as soon as 2026"), and Sam Altman, neuroscience suggests language alone may not produce human-level intelligence.

All these FOMC voices. It feels like Powell is actively diluting his own role, as Fed chair, in an attempt to thwart the capture of his successor. Is that now his legacy?

The Fed is doing this all wrong. If it cuts 25bps in December, the AI boom will come back and then the Digital God will eventually tell it how to meet its 2% inflation target (as long as the answer was somehwere on Reddit in 2017). Morons

Today’s jobs data: not great, not terrible, merely ho-hum substack.com/@macromostly...

Right or wrong, the Fed now blames the weak labour market on supply. That has two big implications: 1) Employment wont spiral against it - so it can take its time 2) The jobs market wont become a source of disinflation - so why cut rates? dont shoot the messenger

Serious economists writing op-eds about who Trump *should* appoint to the Fed, and im here hoping he appoints some wacko, just for kicks 🍿

Did anyone listen to the Swati Dhingra speech yesterday? No text online - just slides. She appears to argue that UK household income is overstated...

Italy has only won one world cup knockout match since the first IPhone was released... ... is the level of analysis we are getting in most macro takes about ChatGPT

The bond vigilantes are supposed to keep governments honest. Maybe we need equity-market vigilantes to keep Big Tech honest, given all these crazy capex plans and circular deals

This deal looks exactly like what OpenAI has been doing just at smaller scale. $15bn in via equity, $30bn out via opex, NVDA keeping the ecosystem spinning, it's all here.

Here's a classic one. Anthropic is going to spend $30 billion on Azure. And with the deal, both Microsoft and Nvidia are both investing in Anthropic

what is the Goldilocks level of AI capex that keeps people bullish NVIDIA, without generating too much anxiety that Big Tech is investing too much. oh shit, there isnt one 🤣

PODCAST TIME. 1. Is Michael Burry right? 2. Will Trump's rebates cause inflation? 3. How should the Fed respond to tech-driven productivity (the Greenspan dilemma)? Best bit- my rap soundtrack at the end. Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t... Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/5eZi...

Rachel Reeves diss track www.producer.ai/song/acdfef7...

Rachel Reeves diss track www.producer.ai/song/acdfef7...

fixed it for you Rachel

Gordon Brown used to meet his fiscal rules by making the lines fatter on a chart. True story. Maybe Rachel should try that...

PODCAST TIME. 1. Is Michael Burry right? 2. Will Trump's rebates cause inflation? 3. How should the Fed respond to tech-driven productivity (the Greenspan dilemma)? Best bit- my rap soundtrack at the end. Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t... Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/5eZi...

The govts big problem is that the UK did austerity at totally the wrong time, when the banks wouldn't lend, the private sector was deleveraging and rates were zero. And now austerity is toxic, even if there is scope to cut rates and relever the private sector today. Few....

Oh Rachel. Planning spending cuts and then cancelling them. Planning tax increases and then cancelling them. Now you are in a worse position than if you had just done nothing and said nothing

Noah Smith.. offended by anti-US jokes at Kilkenomics.. I mean EVEN BY HIS RECENT STANDARDS that is a new low

Scott Bessent diss track www.producer.ai/song/b8e8dab...

Scott Bessent diss track www.producer.ai/song/b8e8dab...

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I....cant... anymore.....😭 take the change in job openings by industry. Plot it against the change in employment by industry. The sectors with the biggest REDUCTIONS in job openings also saw the largest INCREASES in employment. US, France, UK all the same story ChatGPT my ass