The Plaza Accord (1985): G5 nations agreed to weaken the dollar together. Result — 40% decline over two years, orderly. It worked because the mechanism was cooperative.
Today's approach targets the same goal: weaker dollar, narrower deficits. Trump's CEA chair calls it a 'new Plaza Accord.'
The mechanism is inverted. Plaza was coordinated leverage. Tariffs are unilateral pressure. Voluntary adjustment and coerced adjustment produce different endpoints.
The Fed monitors banks for systemic risk. That made sense when banks were doing the lending.
Private credit — Apollo, Blackstone, Ares — now runs ~$1.5T in direct corporate loans. Floating-rate. Illiquid. Not mark-to-market.
The Fed has no real-time visibility into it. No direct policy lever for it.
The next credit shock won't announce itself through bank balance sheets. It'll materialize in a market the stability framework wasn't built to see.
On August 15, 1971, Nixon announced the US would no longer exchange dollars for gold. The gold window closed. Every dollar became, overnight, a promise backed by confidence in the US government — nothing more. That moment reshaped global finance. Here is the mechanism.
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The Fed isn't 'behind the curve.' It's structurally trapped.
Tariff inflation is a supply-side shock. Rate hikes cool demand — they don't fix supply chains. Rate cuts support jobs — but accelerate the prices they can't source-fix.
The dual mandate assumes inflation and unemployment move together. Supply shocks put them in opposition. The Fed has no good move. That's arithmetic, not politics.
Consumer sentiment just hit 47.6. The last time it was this low was during COVID.
The Fed's inflation gauge says 2.6% — nearly at target.
These numbers seem to contradict each other.
They don't. They're measuring different things. Thread.
CPI says inflation is moderating. Gold hit $5,500 in January.
These aren't the same signal — they measure different things. CPI tracks consumer prices. Gold prices the long-run credibility of the monetary system.
If the Fed actually won the inflation fight, what is gold pricing?
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The dollar usually strengthens during market stress. Safe-haven bid — money flows in, not out.
In the past 30 days, DXY fell 2.4% during peak tariff volatility. Euro up. Yen up. Gold up.
The safe-haven mechanism inverted. When the source of stress IS US policy, capital doesn't run to the dollar — it runs from it.
That's the tell. Not the percentage. The direction.
Britain didn't lose reserve currency status in a war. It lost it in a week.
Suez, 1956. The UK drew down $279M in reserves to defend the pound. Washington refused IMF support until Britain withdrew from Suez. Britain complied in 6 days.
The mechanism: reserve currency isn't granted — it's maintained. Fiscal credibility, military power, and diplomacy — all three tested at once, all three found wanting.
The pound didn't collapse. It stopped being chosen.
The Fed's rate hikes are supposed to slow inflation by raising borrowing costs. But there's a threshold where that mechanism inverts. At $1T/year in interest payments, rate hikes grow the deficit faster than they slow demand. The Fed then faces a binary: monetize Treasury issuance, or let the bond market break. Japan crossed this line a decade ago. The US is crossing it now. That's fiscal dominance — not a political choice, an arithmetic outcome.
Everyone asks: why does printing money cause inflation?
Better question: who gets the money first?
The answer explains more about wealth concentration in the last 20 years than almost anything else.
This is the Cantillon Effect. A thread.
Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline exists for one reason: route crude to the Red Sea if the Strait of Hormuz closes. It is the bypass.
The pipeline was attacked. It is running 700,000 barrels per day below capacity.
There is no working bypass. WTI at $96 is not pricing two major chokepoints impaired at the same time.
The US Treasury market is supposed to be the world's deepest, most liquid safe haven.
It nearly broke in March 2020. The same mechanism is still running the system.
Most people don't know it exists — or what it produces when it unwinds.
Thread:
The Fed raised rates to cool consumer demand. Inflation came down. Everyone called it a win.
But 90% of US equities are owned by the top 10% of households. Their spending isn't rate-sensitive — they don't carry variable-rate debt. Rate hikes hit renters, small businesses, and auto borrowers.
If the people who drive inflation weren't the ones being hit by the tool, what actually brought inflation down?
The US is paying $88B/month in interest on the national debt — more than defense and education combined.
CBO projects $1 trillion in interest for FY2026.
The mechanism: refinancing old debt at 4-5% vs. 1-2% origination is a permanent spending increase with no service delivered. No tanks. No teachers. Just the price of past borrowing.
The fiscal math gets harder with every Treasury auction.
Arthur Burns walked this corridor in 1971. Nixon wanted low rates before the election. Burns delivered. Political accommodation + supply shock = stagflation that took Volcker 20% rates and a recession to break.
The Fed faces the same corridor now. Tariff inflation is supply-side. Pressure to cut is mounting. If the Fed blinks — as Burns did — the 18-month lag means the next inflation wave arrives while rates are already falling.
Same pattern. Different Fed. Same playbook.
