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March 29, 2021 60 mins

Jeff Snider is in his element in Episode 60, in which he observes the 20th anniversary of quantitative easing and notes the unsettling twist in oil futures; also, he reacts to the Federal Reserve Chairman who recently likened the Fed's actions last year, to the heroic Dunkirk evacuation.

Your podcaster on the other hand comes out of the gate staggering by slandering everyone's favorite nation: New Zealand. Operating under the false impression that The Hobbit was a documentary, this podcaster opens the show asserting New Zealand is home to all manner of fantastic creatures like the platypus, narwhal, orcs and elves. The YouTube comments were aflame with polite indignation. The narwhal belongs to the Arctic, not Antarctic. Worse yet, the platypus is endemic to the only country in the world that doesn't care for New Zealand: Australia.

To make amends this podcaster watched BBC Planet Earth with New Zealand's fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo: Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement. So dear audience, please squint your ears at the start of the episode. When you hear "platypus", receive Fiordland Crested Penguin, which is twice the size of a normal-sized man.  When you hear "narwhal", instead pick up Kakapo, a parrot that identifies as an owl. When you hear "orcs", perceive Kiwi, like the bald eagle but flightless and with fur. And when you hear "elves", glean Weka another flightless bird with the legs of a witch, a taste for pickled olives and a cholesterol problem.


---------SEE IT-----------
Alhambra YouTube: https://bit.ly/2Xp3roy
Emil YouTube: https://bit.ly/310yisL


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----------TOPICS------------
PART 01: On March 19, 2001 CNN described quantitative easing by the Bank of Japan as "inject[ing] a large amount of money into the Japanese economy." It wasn't large, it wasn't money, and it never got to the economy. In two decades nothing has changed; not in Japan - not anywhere.

PART 02: The headline oil price has been falling since early-March, but insiders were alerted 10 days earlier of possible trouble by the futures curve. What is contango? What is backwardation? Do oil futures tell us the economy is struggling to gain additional liftoff?

PART 03: Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell analogized the central bank actions in March 2020 to the heroic evacuation of soldiers from Dunkirk in WW2. A more fitting analogy is the blunderbuss loss at Dunkirk that necessitated the rescue at all.


--------REFERENCES--------
Central Banks Don't Do Quantities of Money Because They Can't: https://bit.ly/3srNL1j
Kiwi Busted QE And Its Relation To The Reflation Story: https://bit.ly/3ddL78Q

OK, NYMEX, Go On…: https://bit.ly/3cqAmkn
OK NYMEX, Beginning To Notice The Fine Print?: https://bit.ly/3rsmYAs

Was Last Month’s Fedwire A Coincidence?: https://bit.ly/3dffKuu
NPR's Full Interview With Fed Chairman Jerome Powell: https://n.pr/3crz7Sa

Alhambra Investments Blog: https://bit.ly/2VIC2wW
RealClear Markets Essays: https://bit.ly/38tL5a7


---------WHO-----------
Jeff Snider, Head of Global Investment Research for Alhambra Investments and Emil Kalinowski, Flight of the Conchords fan. Art by Dunkirk Lil' Ship Capt. David Parkins. Podcast intro/outro is "New Zealand Story" by S.A. Karl at Epidemic Sound.

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