Professor Steve Hanke watched Washington try something it hadn't done in three decades, intervening to prop up Japan's currency, and the result was a dead cat bounce.
The yen has slid back to almost exactly where it started.
That failure sits inside a pattern he laid out: Treasury buying back ten-year bonds to force long rates down while quietly borrowing short, sanctions layered on top, one man improvising controls across markets he doesn't own.
Steve's verdict on Bessent was surgical:
"trespassing on Fed territory"
Because across the table at Jackson Hole, Warsh preached the opposite religion, no forward guidance, let markets set rates, and he said the one word Powell refused to utter for years: money.
With the money supply growing at 6.7 percent against Hanke's 6 percent ceiling, that reads one way, and it isn't cuts.
The collision comes with a bill attached.
Using the method that showed Iraq costing 25 times its original estimate, Steve's back-of-envelope for this war lands around ONE TRILLION dollars.
The genie is out of the bottle, two arms of the American government are pulling opposite directions, and the meter is still running.
@steve_hanke @WeTheBrandon
