Courtney Brown

You know, and you have kind of the revenge of the bond market.

We wrote a piece this week that I think is interesting with respect to Kevin Warsh.

And it's kind of ironic that the cure for high rates in the bond market might be the high rates, right?

Get the bond market to believe that Kevin Warsh is not going to defy higher inflation expectations and push through lower rates.

Yes, absolutely.

And I was talking with Amos Hochstein, who is an advisor to President Biden on economic issues, energy issues, and he said, the market is pricing in risk at this moment, but they haven't priced in the kind of disruption that we're getting, that we really haven't seen something like this in an extremely...

long period of time.

You know, I think about the move that we saw in the equity markets today.

I think it probably stems from the fact that you've had a president who has felt that he has a lot of determinism over the course of this conflict.

He thinks that he can set a deadline.

He thinks that he can end this war when he wants to end this war.

We even saw that pronouncement earlier this week.

He was going to extend a pause on attacking power plants.

Lo, Israel went ahead and did that today.

I think it's an indication that there are limits to what he's able to do in terms of shaping the trajectory of this conflict.

And while he's been somewhat successful, I think, kind of managing the equity markets over the course of the first few weeks of this conflict, there's a reaction function that he has been unable to manage, and that's oil prices and gas prices.

And that's only gone in one direction since the start of this war.

And so you're right.

It's trickling across the economy.

There are, of course, the first-order effects.