How To Guarantee Higher Prices

Addison Wiggin

December 8, 2025 • 1 minute, 12 second read

Inflation

Not all inflation is created equal:

Turn Your Images On

Areas with the most government regulation have seen the highest inflation. (Source: Mark Perry via X)

It’s absurd, really, for any politician to be talking about “affordability.”

The data is clear. If higher prices are your goal, let the government “fix” them.

Mandates, paperwork, and busybodies telling you what you can and can’t do – it’s not a surprise why costs add up.

In contrast, if you want lower prices, do nothing– zilch. Let the market work.

Side effect: It’s hard not to notice. The quality of TVs, software and smartphones improve while prices are dropping.

In sharp contrast? Healthcare, education and housing – three items on the tip of Hakeem Jeffries tongue – all get worse while prices become unreachable for the folks who depend on them.

~ Addison

P.S. Last week, in Grey Swan Live! with Dan Denning, Bonner Private Research we covered a litany of structural challenges facing the economy and markets in 2026, including the end of Quantitative Tightening (QT), the unraveling of the Yen Carry Trade and a stubborn flattening of the M2 “cash curve.”

For structural reasons, inflation is already sticky. Throw in some less-than-honest posturing from politicians… 2026 is going to be a party!

Catch Dan Denning, Andrew and me right here.

Turn Your Images On

If you have requests for new guests you’d like to see join us for Grey Swan Live!, or have any questions for our guests, send them here.

Ripple Effect

How To Guarantee Higher Prices

Addison Wiggin

December 8, 2025 • 1 minute, 12 second read

Inflation

Not all inflation is created equal:

Turn Your Images On

Areas with the most government regulation have seen the highest inflation. (Source: Mark Perry via X)

It’s absurd, really, for any politician to be talking about “affordability.”

The data is clear. If higher prices are your goal, let the government “fix” them.

Mandates, paperwork, and busybodies telling you what you can and can’t do – it’s not a surprise why costs add up.

In contrast, if you want lower prices, do nothing– zilch. Let the market work.

Side effect: It’s hard not to notice. The quality of TVs, software and smartphones improve while prices are dropping.

In sharp contrast? Healthcare, education and housing – three items on the tip of Hakeem Jeffries tongue – all get worse while prices become unreachable for the folks who depend on them.

~ Addison

For structural reasons, inflation is already sticky. Throw in some less-than-honest posturing from politicians… 2026 is going to be a party!

Catch Dan Denning, Andrew and me right here.

Turn Your Images On

If you have requests for new guests you’d like to see join us for Grey Swan Live!, or have any questions for our guests, send them here.

Gideon Ashwood: The Bondquake in Tokyo: Why Japan’s Shock Is Just the Beginning

December 5, 2025 • Addison Wiggin

For 30 years, Japan was the land where interest rates went to die.

The Bank of Japan used yield-curve control to keep long-term rates sedated. Traders joked that shorting Japanese bonds was the “widow-maker trade.”

Not anymore.

On November 20, 2025, everything changed. Quietly, but decisively.

The Bank of Japan finally pulled the plug on decades of easy money. Negative rates were removed. Yield-curve control was abandoned. The policy rate was lifted to a 17-year high.

Suddenly, global markets had to reprice something they had ignored for years.

What happens when the world’s largest creditor nation stops exporting cheap capital and starts pulling it back home?

The answer came fast. Bond yields in Europe and the United States began climbing. The Japanese yen strengthened sharply. Wall Street faltered.

Gideon Ashwood: The Bondquake in Tokyo: Why Japan’s Shock Is Just the Beginning

Minsky, the Fed, and the Fragile Good Cheer

December 5, 2025 • Addison Wiggin

The rate cut narrative is calcifying into gospel: the Fed must cut to save the consumer.

Bankrate reports that 59% of Americans cannot cover a $1,000 emergency without debt or selling something. And yet stocks are roaring, liquidity junkies are celebrating, and the top 10% now account for half of all consumer spending.

Here’s the plot twist: before 2020, consumer confidence faithfully tracked equity markets. After 2020, that relationship broke. As one analyst put it, “The poor don’t hate stocks going up. They just don’t feel it anymore.”

So when the Fed cuts rates in one of the hottest stock markets in history, who exactly benefits? Not the 59%. Not the middle. Certainly not anyone renting and watching shelter inflation devour their paycheck.

Minsky, the Fed, and the Fragile Good Cheer

The Unsinkable S&P

December 5, 2025 • Addison Wiggin

Only the late-stage dot-com fever dreams did better in recent memory — back when analysts were valuing companies by the number of mammals breathing inside the office.

For the moment, stocks appear unsinkable, unslappable, and perhaps uninsurable. But this is what generational technology shifts do: they take a kernel of genuine innovation and inflate a decade of growth into a 36-month highlight reel. We’ve seen this movie. It premiered in 1999 and closed with adults crying into their PalmPilots.

And just as the internet continued reshaping the world long after Pets.com curled up and died, AI will keep marching on whether or not today’s multiples survive a stiff breeze. The technology is real. The valuations, however, will eventually need to stop hyperventilating and sit down with a glass of water.

Dan Denning: So Much Depends on a Green Wheelbarrow

December 4, 2025 • Addison Wiggin

Wheelbarrows are not chickens. A chicken is a biological production unit. A wheelbarrow is a capital good. A wheelbarrow doesn’t produce work. But it CAN be a productivity multiplier.

And that’s how we have to think of all those GPUs the hyperscalers are spending money on. If their thesis is right, trillion in AI and data center spending now, will translate into a massive burst in productivity and new technologies in the next two decades. That is the only justification for the current valuations/multiples at which these stocks trade now.

The American poet William Carlos Williams wrote, “So much depends, upon a red wheelbarrow, glazed with rainwater, beside the white chickens.”

Today the wheelbarrow is Nvidia Green. And so much of the stock market depends on that wheelbarrow being a big enough productivity multiplier to offset $340 trillion in debt.

Dan Denning: So Much Depends on a Green Wheelbarrow

Gideon Ashwood: The Bondquake in Tokyo: Why Japan’s Shock Is Just the Beginning

December 5, 2025 • Addison Wiggin

For 30 years, Japan was the land where interest rates went to die.

The Bank of Japan used yield-curve control to keep long-term rates sedated. Traders joked that shorting Japanese bonds was the “widow-maker trade.”

Not anymore.

On November 20, 2025, everything changed. Quietly, but decisively.

The Bank of Japan finally pulled the plug on decades of easy money. Negative rates were removed. Yield-curve control was abandoned. The policy rate was lifted to a 17-year high.

Suddenly, global markets had to reprice something they had ignored for years.

What happens when the world’s largest creditor nation stops exporting cheap capital and starts pulling it back home?

The answer came fast. Bond yields in Europe and the United States began climbing. The Japanese yen strengthened sharply. Wall Street faltered.

Minsky, the Fed, and the Fragile Good Cheer

December 5, 2025 • Addison Wiggin

The rate cut narrative is calcifying into gospel: the Fed must cut to save the consumer.

The Unsinkable S&P

December 5, 2025 • Addison Wiggin

Only the late-stage dot-com fever dreams did better in recent memory — back when analysts were valuing companies by the number of mammals breathing inside the office.

Dan Denning: So Much Depends on a Green Wheelbarrow

December 4, 2025 • Addison Wiggin

Wheelbarrows are not chickens. A chicken is a biological production unit. A wheelbarrow is a capital good. A wheelbarrow doesn’t produce work. But it CAN be a productivity multiplier.

The American poet William Carlos Williams wrote, “So much depends, upon a red wheelbarrow, glazed with rainwater, beside the white chickens.”

Today the wheelbarrow is Nvidia Green. And so much of the stock market depends on that wheelbarrow being a big enough productivity multiplier to offset $340 trillion in debt.