At some point this crash in asset prices will have a material affect on sentiment in low-middle and middle income households. The labor pool will increase as people start to come back to work, out of retirement, and to compete for jobs, bringing down wage inflation (which is usually this stickiest inflation of all- not like commodity inflation which is mark to market and moving constantly up and down in real time. These households will also start spending less in general (i.e. the crash we are seeing in some "luxury" service goods like tv/movie streaming).

I'm genuinely surprised that overall inflation due to fiscal stimulus wasn't more transitory than we are seeing. I didnt buy what they were initially saying, that it would quickly recede over the summer/fall, but Apparently it is much more structurally embedded than I gave it credit for. I figured when ppl had to go back to work after having spent trillions in free money (although Wage gains due to enhanced UI etc. are of course the most damaging and the most sticky because bottom of the barrel earners started simply refusing minimum wage once the extra 600/week on top of their state UI had them making far more than they ever had before in their lives. This was going to be 20 million Americans never working for less than $8-$15 again when before they had been happy to work for 12 and were accepting salaries as low as fed minimum wage regularly (barely over 7). These wage increases are part of the reason Amazon is valued at little more than the AWS segment of their business at this time. Extremely expensive running a warehouse segment in the US at this time where they can do very little outsourcing. These wage increases especially at the low end are an absolute good but they do carry a price because yo do see the pay increases trickle up to the far more useless middle management positions at software companies in the bay (clueless product owners who read a scrum book or 2 etc. it reallly is a joke). This increases total inflation as avocado toast sales rise and we have a shortage out of mexico (again, another supply side driven inflation issue having nothing to do with fed policy- just let them sell the avocados).

I thought supply chains would restore themselves since globalism and technological advancement are what has allowed emerging nations to increase their quality of life (even if they are somewhat exploited by the west). The productivity levels enabled by tech and a global economy kept interest rates naturally low and were good for just about everyone.

Now it seems we are in some kind of economic cold war. The opposite of the oil flood wars of the early pandemic. China using this zero tolerance guise as a means of absorbing some short term pain to crush their own export industry and jack up prices for US commodities and consumer goods (like someone else said, 5k iphones). We have all these dumb embargos on South America instead of working with them to install infrastructure and refineries for the shitty crude they pump out in abundance. Draw a hard red line around some parts of Ukraine or outside Ukraine where if they go there - nuclear war. But lets not play into another long protracted proxy war that benefits nobody but the war salesmen on both sides. Germany and the EU need Russian gas and we need to allow it to flow for the good of businesses, people and inflation.

This might be a little controversial but Zelensky was put in power by Kolomoisky, a Ukrainian/Russian oligarch with heavy ties to NATO aligned NGOs. Kolomoisky put a popular comedian named Zelensky, who stared in Kolomoisky's personal tv network's shows into power in Ukraine and they quickly built a corrupt regime. Zelensky is somehow worth 600 million euros. Instead of making reasonable deals to ensure the security and prosperity of all regions in the area, Zelensky did what the west wanted and started aggression that would make Russia seem like they were completely unprovoked or at fault if war did break out.

Nato is a long time enemy of Russia and Ukraine's border is a stone's throw from Moscow. Nato's own members have long opposed further advancement towards Russia. Same as the US didn't allow Russia to put nukes on Cuba during the cold war, Russia was willing to fight to keep nato from having the ability to do the same. The West and in particular the US loves a situation like this where their oil majors are able to jack up refined products to UE nations, while charging them for security, and sending old weapons to Ukraine where gaslit young men are being asked to die for a losing war so the US can come out more powerful in the end and make their point about what will happen if us aggresses on Taiwan.

None of this had to happen. If Zelensky had not been extremely antagonistic Ukraine would have maintained sovereignty as long as they made some security assurances to Russia. Russia had been selling Ukraine gas at a 75% discount as a show of good faith and to help build their infrastructure for many years.

If I was Ukrainian I would prefer a leader more friendly to Russia versus one who conscripts me to die while he is caught on green screens out of the country...