CRACKS IN THE DAM

Doug Noland has been writing the Credit Bubble Bulletin since 2000.

Nobody tracks systemic financial risk better. This week he updated his famous “little town on the river” fable.

Here’s the short version.

They built a town beside a flood-prone river. Insurance companies started selling flood policies. Profits were good. That attracted speculators pretending to be insurers.

Nobody held reserves. A reinsurance market boomed. Construction exploded.

Then it flooded.

The market collapsed.

But the government built a dam. Then another. Then another.

Each crisis. Another bailout. Each new dam allowed the building boom to continue further downstream. The river never won. The town forgot it could.

But then an earthquake. Not a big one. But enough to crack one of the upriver dams. The villagers didn’t notice. The river wasn’t rising yet. Only the most plugged-in players knew the dam had started to crack.

Sound familiar?

Doug’s been writing about the bailout barrage for twenty-five years.

The Fed did QE in ‘19 when markets wobbled. The Bank of England nuked QT in ‘22 when UK gilts imploded. The Fed injected $500 billion when SVB collapsed in ‘23. The BOJ talked markets off the ledge during the yen carry trade unwind in August ‘24.

And when Liberation Day broke everything in April, the “TACO put” saved the day. Trump Always Chickens Out. He paused tariffs, markets ripped, crisis averted.

For every new crisis. A new dam.

The problem is that they built those dams on a fault line. The engineering is subpar. And the big one is coming.

It’s not if, but when.

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The Iran war is another earthquake. Strangled the Strait of Hormuz. Oil is spiking. Bonds getting goofy. Ten-year UK gilts broke above 5% for the first time since ‘08. Italian yields jumped 19 beeps in a day. Australian yields hit a 15-year high. EM currencies got crushed. Credit default swaps spiked to levels not seen since April.

The MOVE index measures bond volatility. It jumped 24 points in a single session. Double the Liberation Day move.

That’s the river rising.

Meanwhile Donny the Disruptor dropped the idea of winding down the war. Markets exhaled for twelve hours. Then reality returned. Marines are deploying. Israel keeps bombing.

But the IRGC still controls the chokepoint. They showed they can throw energy markets into chaos whenever they want.

So the “TACO put” has a problem. Because the Orange Man can’t control wars.

Every previous bailout involved a policy lever. Rate cuts. QE. Liquidity facilities. Reassuring press conferences.

Those tools work when the crisis is financial. They don’t work when the crisis is an oil tanker sitting sideways in the Strait of Hormuz.

Noland’s conclusion: central banks will respond slower and smaller than markets demand. The “whatever it takes” era is meeting its match.

Here’s what it means for your portfolio.

The levered speculating community is on their heels. Carry trades are blowing up. Risk parity strategies are sucking wind. The crowded trades that worked for a decade are unwinding.

Gold knows. Bitcoin is figuring it out. Stocks remain resilient.

But the dam has cracks. And the villagers still think it’s just another Monday.

What if it isn’t?

MILLENNIAL VILLAGE

“Inflation is when you pay $45 for a haircut that used to be $15 back when you had hair.”

I went to a restaurant in Cambie Village.

Which is realtor speak for the gentrified area between Broadway and 25th. They even have their own Insta page. Which refers to the area as “one of Vancouver's primary heritage boulevards”.

The girl at the front Jess, holds her clipboard like it’s the Epstein list.

She tells us at 5:07 that we were too early for our 5:15 reservation. And she said it with a straight face.

When asked if we could have a drink at the bar, she quips that the bar is for walk-ins only.

Yet the 20 seat bar was 100% empty. First sign that we weren’t in Kansas anymore.

So we stumbled down to the adjacent hipster joint for a drink. Where Adam described the $29 Prosecco as having "hints of pear essence”. And said that it "tiptoed near the champagne region but with softer bubbles”. I must be in St. Tropez now.

When we returned to Jess’ place it vibed with Mills spending $30 on cocktails and $40 on crab dip.

The food was good but not great. The service was adequate but not stunning. And driving to Cambie Village in rush hour is a pain.

More striking than the prices was the ease with which most Mills pay them. Molly Millennial is ok with paying $15 for bread. And waiting in line to hand over $200 for dinner.

Then it occurred to me.

This demographic has never seen cheap prices. Because they were born into inflation.

They’ve never paid four bucks for a Bud at Bar None or five bucks for endless wings at Carlos 'n’ Buds.

Which is why it doesn’t bother them the way it bothers us.

So what does it mean?

Humans are adaptable. Inflation is not a new thing. It’s just new to us. People in Argentina, Venezuela, Turkey and Cyprus have been adapting for decades.

They cope by learning to store their wealth in houses. Or U.S. dollars. Or gold. And now on their phone in Bitcoin.

How did we get here?

Because politicians change the rules mid game to suit their narrative. To wit, the Orange Man fired the BLS economist in charge of the jobs data. Because he didn’t like the employment numbers.

He cajoles the head of the money printing cabal daily. Two of his potential replacements for Fed chief abstained from holding rates steady. (One abstention is unique. Two is a unicorn.)

Folks this is Banana Republic type stuff. What you’re witnessing is the Argentinisation of economic data.

And it’s a slippery slope where trust erodes fast. Trust in our institutions is already at all time lows. And next comes a loss of trust in our money.

The downstream effects are starting to appear. There’s no rush for Molly to get married. Or have kids. Birth rates in the western world are dropping to a point that we aren’t replacing ourselves.

The percentage of married 30 years olds who are also home owners has dropped to 75 year lows (see chart below).

As Martin Pelletier said on X, “What we did to a whole generation is shameful.”

In a word, we took away their hope. Hope of having a home. Hope of raising a family.

And when there is no hope, your time preference shrinks.

Might as well spend $58 on two ounces of Wagu. Take that $10k trip to the Amalfi coast. Why not. You’ll never be able to afford a house. Let alone a family. So what’s the point in saving?

But those non-savers end up leaning into the state for housing.

Which is why Nova Scotia is building affordable housing that looks like army barracks. Not shocking that it’s actually on an old military base.

Affordable, sure. But sole crushing and sad.

Back at the basement hipster joint “La La”, the DJ plays vinyl records from behind the bar. A hint at a desire for something real.

Molly the Mill pays for her drinks with a tap of her $1,800 iPhone. And the Gen-Z waiter knows to split the bill without even asking.

They uber everywhere and plan their sick days around long weekends. It’s early, and yet it feels like the joy has left the room.

We couldn’t get out of their village fast enough.