Lyn Alden

So the defense department, all the contractors there, the healthcare system, social security spending, that's where the capital is going into the economy.

And of course, other parts are squeezed.

So we're in this like holding pattern.

And as long as energy is flowing and cheap, right?

So as long as oil is not a bottleneck, that keeps the lid on inflation.

And so they have quite a bit of runway, I think, to go forward with probably some rate cuts.

And I don't think the balance sheet expansion will be particularly inflation in the next, call it year or two years.

Yeah, so I think inflation is a spectrum because it doesn't show up evenly, obviously.

And there's a pretty simple calculation, which is you have the debasement rate, basically money supply growth, and then you have some amount of productivity growth.

Right now, obviously, AI is a big factor, but over time, it's automation, it's everything.

All of our technology, all of our organization, billions of people every day are trying to make things cheaper, essentially, and finding new ways to make things cheaper.

So you have that, you know, let's call it 7% money supply growth over the long term.

And then you might have 4% productivity increases every year.

So that difference, roughly speaking, that 3% in a longer term pattern is the price increases.

And around the world, central banks are basically doing their best to counteract

the deflation that we would get from productivity growth with that money supply increases.

But there are periods of time where we don't get much more productive in a given five-year strategy.

It could be because there's energy shortages, it could be because there's war or something like that.

Other times you're in that period where

productivity is flowing.