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It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

bridgewater.com

11–20 of 478 posts

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#11
post #4

I'm honestly surprised inflation hasn't been worse than what we've already seen. 10-year treasury yields are still well below their 2019 levels and are currently below their levels from Q2 of this year.

I’m not an economist, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that the CPI is gamed somehow, or at least the official government numbers do not reflect the bubble of the US I live in. My friends and family are seeing record wages and investment growth, but when my generation cohort looks at housing and all the numbers there are proportionally even higher, and people are selling 3 year old cars for nearly the nominal price they paid for it 3 years ago.

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#12

WARNING: This site has an obscenely obnoxious terms & conditions blocking modal. I would prefer this link to be removed, it is so egregious. Post something, or don't. Don't put up a blocking modal to force me to read some terms & conditions before reading the actual content.

Nearly all investment management companies do this, I presume because of SEC rules.

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#14
Addressing a few different comments because it may not be known: Bridgewater is a hedge fund. One of the bigger ones, and most successful. Kind of old school. But because of this, any content that they disseminate must be very clearly be labeled at opinion/research and not investment advice. This is the reason for the obnoxious modal. This one can't be avoided.

The email newsletter upsell, however...

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#15

For anyone scratching their head on what "MP3" is: monetary policy 3, i.e. "helicopter money," i.e. "the government be handin out them stimmies," i.e. the government injected COVID-19 relief funds into the economy, giving an across-the-board increase in demand for goods & services, but there aren't enough "goods & services" to keep up with this demand.

Thanks you!

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#17
post #5

It's a plausible theory, but it doesn't explain the long queues of container ships waiting to be unloaded.

Demand shocks would manifest themselves as bottlenecks in different places along the supply chain as supply attempted to catch up.

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#18

WARNING: This site has an obscenely obnoxious terms & conditions blocking modal. I would prefer this link to be removed, it is so egregious. Post something, or don't. Don't put up a blocking modal to force me to read some terms & conditions before reading the actual content.

Crazy how much more pleasant web is with uMatrix. I did not even notice this until you pointed it out

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#19
First really thorough analysis of this situation that I have seen. It is surprising that this observation isn't more common, it is very obvious from looking at sectoral balance sheets...but, I suppose, not many people do this (it is odd to me that what was done during the pandemic had literally never been tried before, there was no economic logic for doing so, and no economist said: hold on, is this a good idea? And still, just a crowd of nodding dogs...you can only rely on an economist for a convincing explanation of what was happened, never the future, never creativity, never analysis).

One point that I don't think is made clear. Because this problem is totally artificial, it isn't clear how you solve it. Clearly, prices are going to have to increase substantially to choke off demand. But even once you do that, there is a question in some industries of whether supply can increase at all. Some big industrials are trading on mid-single digit P/E ratios, they just can't get money (most are actually being incentivized to return this, repeat that: shortage of almost everything, the market is telling them...reduce supply urgently). There is a flood of money for "risk-free" investments and tech (read: unprofitable, never going to be profitable but has value because you might be able to convince someone that you will be profitable...eventually), everyone else is being starved to death. It is quite terrifying because the govt has managed to debauch almost every price in the economy. Nothing is working.

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