Accumulated Quotations
Under construction
American politics IS a race to the metaversal bottom between Trumpism, Wall Streetism and Wokeism, with one horrible anti-human idea after another presented with greater and greater narrative sophistication and narrative weaponization. – Ben Hunt
The solutions (to our current problems) were decades ago. There is now no good way out. – Lyn Alden
We could raise interest rates in 15 minutes, if we have to. So there really is no problem with raising rates, tightening monetary policy, slowing the economy, reducing inflation at the appropriate time. – Ben Bernake, 12/6/2010
It’s going to be an unpopular opinion here but the market position that the central banks want to see liquidated THE most is the long in energy. Until that breaks due to demand destruction everything else will remain under pressure. - Raoul Pal
The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.
- George Orwell
My God, I’ve never seen a country more in need of a hero – Peggy Noonan
There is no constituency for fiscal sanity in the US. The parties are simply irresponsible in different ways. – John Mauldin
US politicians have still not figured out that with debt/GDP this high, inflation has been the only thing standing between them & western social democracy insolvency. If they think inflation is unpopular, wait till they have to cut Entitlements (now ~70% of record US tax receipts) – Luke Gromen
…eventually, asset valuations which are goosed to such an extent that they are barely affordable at low interest rates become downright unsustainable at higher ones. - Dylan Grice
It should be perfectly clear by now the Fed's only tool to making inflation go away is making you poor, so you stop buying crap and demand falls. - Jim Bianco
People think solar panels & lithium battery-powered electric cars became cheap because of tech innovation, but it's now clear that it was overwhelmingly the result of China's use of coerced labor, coal, and government subsidies. - Michael Shellenberger
The most destructive force on Earth is the need for politicians to be seen as doing something. - Me
I keep reading articles that lionize how Volcker tightened to fight inflation, but none of them mention that (today's) the US balance sheet has more in common with Argentina than 1979 USA. - Luke Gromen
Energy is not a sector of the economy, the economy is a sector of energy - Anon
The molecular symphony that is the fossil fuel industry powers life, produces critical material goods, and ensures the very survival of the human species. Without the brilliant scientists, engineers, technicians, and field workers who keep these essential products flowing, society would collapse within months. Our political class – a collection of people who have benefited the most from and yet know the least about the hard work that goes on in the space – continues to do its level best to impede and reverse the development of our domestic energy bounty, naively assuming they can jackhammer away at the foundation of the tower they sit atop and somehow be immune from the consequences of its collapse. - Doomberg
For the foreseeable future, we cannot feed the world without relying on fossil fuels. - Vaclav Smil
40 years of the status quo USD system has left US policymakers that were born on 3rd base and thinking they hit a triple actually believing that the real value in money is the printing press, not the energy in the system. – Luke Gromen
We are living in a perfect time ... and it is passing. - Peter Zeihan
When you are right, you have a moral duty to impose your will on anyone who disagrees with you. —Tomas de Torquemada, Grand Inquisitor of Spain (1429-1498)
In other words, what we see as “inflation” often represents not higher prices, but the end of artificially low prices. Or, put differently, it’s not so much price inflation as price rationalization. These businesses are finally having to charge enough to cover their costs, which comes as a shock to customers. - John Mauldin
The 2020s decade is shaping up to be an energy insecure decade for many. If we destroy enough energy demand and cause enough suffering, we can put the problem "back in the box" for a period of time. But until we have more abundant energy supply, the underlying problem persists. - Lyn Alden
Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one. - Charles MacKay
Government overspending and transfer programs have inflated the money supply while resulting in unchecked corruption and waste. We will be paying that bill for generations, and what a colossal waste of resources and missed opportunity. - Dallas Fed
If your job can be done from the beach, it can probably also be done from Bangladesh, by someone who makes a lot less money than you do. - Anon
The world needs to wake up to an existing reality. The world is running out of energy capacity at all levels. - Abdulaziz bin Salman
The world can’t survive without Russia’s oil. … The system will collapse. Now, if we had no debt, we’d probably be okay. We’d have a nasty recession, but we can manage it. But it’s the debt and the sovereign debt, if it was just private debt companies going bankrupt, who cares? The sovereign debt market itself will collapse if they take away Russian energy and that’s crucial. – Luke Gromen
If you find yourself struggling to explain perfectly obvious things to people who surely understood them a few short years ago, it's because you're up against sophistry. – Bret Weinstein
Sometimes I wonder if the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it. – Mark Twain
We have no doubt that Yellen is incredibly bright; but for our purposes of
protecting and growing our wealth, a bright policymaker implementing imbecilic policies out of political expediency is functionally indistinguishable from an imbecile – Luke Gromen
We want to be very clear – the current setup may be the scariest setup we have seen in our 27-year career – Luke Gromen
Why should freedom of speech be allowed? Why should a government allow itself to be criticized? Ideas are much more fatal things than guns. Why should any man be allowed to disseminate pernicious opinions calculated to embarrass the government? - Lenin
Instead of a Volcker moment, we got a Putin moment and we basically have war and out of this war, something will also emerge. Out of this, I think this "Bretton Woods III" that I started to kind of develop and run with, is a world where we are, again, going to go back to commodity-backed money - where gold, once again, is going to play a big role. And not just gold, but I think all forms of commodities - Zoltan Pozar
We are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death – Neil Postman
While not everyone is ready to accept the recent good news on climate, the fact is that the world has now moved into what might be called a “post-apocalyptic climate policy” — that is, a climate policy that is predicated not on millenarian expectations for the end of times, but one that is grounded more realistically and pragmatically in first how to maintain, and second how to accelerate the positive energy system trends now underway. – Roger Pielke Jr
Money is just a call on energy. – A lot of people Inflation only ends when you have a collapse in energy prices or a massive recession. – Louis-Vincent Gave
Inflation is a feature, not a bug – Louis-Vincent Gave (we have to inflate away the debt)
Disaster is a strong but appropriate word that applies perfectly to the state of U.S. monetary policy – Lacy Hunt
The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence because it's so rare. – Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Rapid advances in science and technology cast such a spell over man's conscious mind that it forgot the unpredictable forces of the unconscious. Once more we see people cutting each other’s throats in support of childish theories of how to create paradise on earth. - Carl Jung
With censorship soaring and real reporting all but taboo, the major dailies have just one important function left: being a political signaling system - Matt Taibbi
Over the past 25 years, our leaders have intentionally constructed an Apocalypse Now world of proclamation and fiat, where our wealth has grown much faster than our economy...
The bill is due for their hubris, and inflation is here to collect it. And that is exactly what our Kurtzian leaders have done in the United States over the past 25 years. In their overweening pride, they have stolen what is not rightfully theirs to lift themselves and their people up to unnatural heights. Through monetary and fiscal policies that have pulled forward future growth and productivity into the present, they have not only stolen wealth and prosperity from our children and our children’s children, but they have also created a political dynamic that has hollowed-out the Constitution and its attendant political norms. - Ben Hunt
Renewables actually lock in fossil fuels because they can’t finish the job. - Lea Booth
We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality – Ayn Rand
Writing and passing actual legislation is no longer the point of American government. The point of American government is to remain in American government, and the way you do that is to tell a good story. – Ben Hunt
There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
In plain English: There isn’t enough oil at prices that don’t blow up the economy to fund the level of GDP growth needed so that the debt doesn’t blow up the economy but if prices rise enough to get enough oil without blowing up the economy it will blow up the debt. Got that? - Luke Gromen
Short version. For the moment at least, hydrogen is economically, logistically AND environmentally stupid. - Peter Zeihan
We are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death – Neil Postman
We believe we are at the onset of a global famine of historic proportions - Doomberg
The things that will destroy America are prosperity at any price, peace at any price, safety first instead of duty first, and love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life. – Theodore Roosevelt
I view inflation to likely be a recurring story for the 2020s decade even as we see relief from it for periods of time. - Lyn Alden