A plantation by any other name is just a farm, but it does roll off the tongue a little sweeter.     -“Sweet Home Alabama”, 2002 If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.     -English colloquialism The substantial Fed balance sheet expansion from Covid remains partially in place today; as the Fed continues to reduce its balance sheet, there is risk that market resiliency could

The nine-nation BRICS group consists of 5 surplus economies and 4 deficit economies, with surpluses in 2023 collectively amounting to 3.5 times the deficits. That means that even if the BRICS nations were willing to accumulate assets in each other’s countries (and they are not), they would nonetheless have to balance their collective surpluses by acquiring a huge amount of assets outside the BRICs economies. (It would have been more than $780 billion in 2023).