The Resource Apocalypse?

This week the European energy crisis took center stage on Finance Twitter. Is this right and truly checkmate for Europe? With Vladimir Putin throttling natural gas, and no longer under the pretense of scheduled maintenance, what does the winter hold for, say, German Industry?  The Germans might have enough in storage to weather the cold, but what will prices look like for European citizens and businesses?

All of this has led to massively negative sentiment. Erik Townsend of Macro Voices ended his podcast this week with a prediction that the world might be ending. Well, at the very least he said the Halcyon days of cheap energy and easy living for the West are done and that World War III is at hand. Which was also his way of saying that commodities will become exorbitantly expensive over the next decade. 

Back in North America, we revisit the topic of Fed Policy. Sure enough, inflation and unemployment are the watchwords. But what about credit market liquidity? If that seizes up, they might be forced to waffle earlier than inflation would otherwise allow. So we turn to credit spreads.