weekend notes

Hope all goes well… Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Happy New Year. To you and your families. Resurrected one of my favorite little memories, an opening note from Christmas past… Christmas Day 2013: “Santa slipped down the chimney. Left big boot prints in the ash that spilled across our hearth. And the jolly fella stuffed stockings. Built a train set too. Sprinkled magic everywhere. Moments befor

Hope all goes well… In case you missed it, Jay Clayton, a member of One River’s Academic and Regulatory Advisory Council (click here) penned an important opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal (click here). Dusted off an anecdote from late 2018 that still cracks me up. It’s about life when you’re last in line (see below). Back in January with full weekend notes. All the best, E Week-in-Review (e

Hope all goes well… Dusted off an anecdote from late 2018, exploring the preconditions for what has started to unfold in markets, politics, policy (see below). It’s often good to step back, survey the landscape. The dynamics that brought us here were decades in the making. And it would be unprecedented if this cycle shift lasts less than ten years. Back in January with full weekend notes. All the

“To prepare for the future, we must first reimagine the past in a manner that central banks won’t,” said the CIO. “So, what is it that central banks can’t imagine?” he asked, rhetorically. “Can they imagine being both right and wrong? Right that the inflation potential of the system is low due to the persistence of deflationary forces that are now well known, but wrong because their actions –

Hope all goes well… “You guys are late for dinner,” I said, Teddy and Liv walking into the kitchen, black boots, blue pants, white pressed shirts, name tags, surgical scissors, full Emergency Medical Technician uniforms. “Sorry Dad, we got held up on a call,” said Liv (18). “Everything okay?” asked Mara, always concerned, but conditioned to not pry, rules of the game with two volunteer EMTs in the

Hope all goes well… “My brain says jump, but my body won’t move,” whispered Teddy this morning, not looking at me, staring into the distance, the wind howling. “It means you’re thinking Teddy — don’t overthink this, just jump,” I said, climbing my way out of the water, the rest of my little lemmings leaping off the rock, plunging into icy water. Charlie, Liv, Jackson. Kerplunk. Kerplunk. Ker

Anecdote (December 2015): “Cliff jumping,” answered Jackson, without hesitation, taking charge. Olivia, Teddy and Charlie cheered. Filling the air with the magic of mischief. I’d asked for ideas. We needed out. Thanksgiving had overwhelmed us. So we piled into the Suburban, in search of sanctuary, solitude. The Greenwich cliffs are hidden deep in back-country. And like so much in today’s wild, the

Hope all goes well… “I need to decide,” whispered Biden to himself, struggling, unsure. “Lael is just terrific, no doubt, and her Fed wouldn’t dare cut off my funding,” thought the President, old enough to remember bond vigilantes. “But you can’t help but like Jay, a fine gentleman, a decent human being, and face it, he’s still buying over $100bln of bonds a month with CPI humming hotter than 6%,”

In my twenties I read everything, my religious ritual. The Economist, cover to cover without fail. Barron’s. Their roundtables. So many newspapers, my Sundays utterly consumed. Wall Street research, countless numbing reports. Week in review. Ahead too. Year after year in preview. If I learned anything at all, it is that there is no single truth, just interpretation. And it’s not that there is anyt