Powell signals Fed will go after inflation hard; Taiwan export orders rise sharply; EU:China relations sour further; China demographics irreversible; UST 10yr 2.30%; gold and oil up; NZ$1 = 68.8 USc; TWI-5 = 74

Those things are all happening, but it's not going to grow more crops or produce more oil, it's going to cause a recession.  Once business go bust and people lose their jobs or hours are cut back, prices will fall.  If your in business and getting squeezed by rising input costs and rising interest rates, you can't expand your business, you have to make cuts.

Maybe in 20 years we will have super cheap houses and expansive goods.

The logic isn't that crazy considering we gradually replaced those well-paying goods-producing industries with bulk commodity exports, and low-wage tourism and hospitality. Meanwhile, the basket of goods and services an average consumer buys in a year has grown substantially over the 30 years, and apart from some fresh produce and low-value services, nothing is sourced from within our borders.

As a result, we have relied on debt, housing inflation and people imports to keep our economy chugging.

And if rates go high enough, deflating asset bubbles they also created via insanely loose monetary policy. When you look at central bank mandates to promote financial stability...you then realise they are guilty for a significant part of the instability we see in markets through crazy monetary policy and market intervention.

I do wonder if there is a better way of doing business...i.e. a world without central bankers.

Do central bankers suffer from the same condition as arsonist firefighters? You know, the guys/girls that light fires so that they have something to do? (for admiration or out of curiosity?) Do central banks purposefully create scenarios of deflation and inflation so that they can prove their own importance? Left alone, the markets would naturally find the price of money and assets would be price based upon what people can afford to pay with a natural price of money....not 0% OCR that has been artificially created by crazy central bankers.

1200000 is 1.2 million  

Have you seen the swap rate charts lately?

7% retail mortgage rates are looking very likely this year.

7% retail mortgage interest rates this year?   You're smoking the good stuff aren't you?

This time last year there were similar comments about interest rates getting back up to 4% within 12 months.

OCR has only just started climbing from emergency levels once this goes back to normal levels say 5% without doubt 7% - 8% will become the average mortgage rate. Smoking good stuff or not no illusions here.

Rationing has become obvious. Link

Oil prices were already at $90 before Russia stuff happened, but no the Saudi's can't pump an extra 5mbpd, maybe 500kbpd.

News article? Regurgitated puff-piece perhaps?

Squishy - many years ago, I thought oil could go to x hundred dollars a barrel. As did Goldman Sachs, at the time. I've since learned; it can't

Very simply, energy underwrites money. You've seen me write this here, a hundred times. Think it through; how can a reducing-quality, peaked-output essential underwrite, be 'worth more' of something backed by itself?

Since 2008, the split has tripled (we call it debt). It can't go 'x hundred a barrel', we can't even 'afford' it now.

I'd be very skeptical that Saudi has any significant spare capacity. They've been drawing down their oil inventory to supplement their production for the last 3-4 years. 

Saw a news article yesterday that indicated the Saudis were ramping up production.

All oil producers had to cut back during the pandemic anyway, so they are all relishing ramping up production and beating out the Russians for oil supply. Even Venezuela is now approached by the US with promises of lifting or cutting sanctions!

There are many reasons for war and just looking back at wars that have happened in my lifetime I don't think many of them were about scarcity.

Well despite modern technology & such Putin & his military are a mere shadow of the last great European invader. By 1 September 1939 Adolf had reclaimed the Ruhr Valley, annexed Austria & invaded Czechoslovakia without firing a shot. By 26 September 1939, ie just 26 days, Germany   had defeated Poland. Back at in May 1940 Germany, took six weeks to defeat & carry Belgium,Holland,Luxembourg and France. Oh and in between times Norway & Denmark had been mopped up.  The doomed Operation Barbarossa achieved greater conquest of Ukraine in three weeks than what Russia has achieved now.

murray86,

Sadly, very sadly, pdk believes that war(and pandemics) are essential to achieve global depopulation. We wrote precisely that only a few days ago. He also believes in contraception, though he did not specify whether that should be purely voluntary or compulsory

Here are the two main reasons for Putin's invasion of Ukraine:

1. National security. Since the fall of the USSR, the former Soviet states have steadily joined NATO. All border Russia.

2. Monopoly on oil and gas supply to EU - Ukraine's oil and gas deposits discovered in 2012 would put it as a serious rival to Russia for supply of oil and gas to the EU. Ukraine joining NATO would provide protection from Russia who would lose their dominant position as supplier of oil and gas to Europe.

These added to the declining birth rates, poorly educated population, poor military tech development, rampant corruption and a much too large a territory to defend means that in a decade or two, Russia won't be able to defend itself, much less project power.

Now (at least in Putin's mind)  is the time to take any kind of action, even if it ends in failure. In a decade or two (and assuming Putin is gone or retired by then), Russia won't have the manpower to do anything.