This is CBSI on the world. I'm John Batchel with John Sherlock Holmes Cochran of the Hoover

Institution, who's in pursuit. Actually, I think he already found the suspect. But we're playing

a Sherlock Holmes game. Remember, eliminate the impossible and whatever left is the truth, no matter how improbable it is.

All right.

There's an illustration in John's grumpy economist, which he keeps it substack.

It shows a donkey card.

The donkey card has a carrot hanging in front of the donkey to keep it going, carrot and inducing the donkey to move forward. However,

suddenly there's something called a lab leak, COVID. That leads to a supply shock. That leads to fiscal

and monetary policy. And that leads to inflation. Is this printed in stone, John, is this what

will happen if we get another shock like COVID or an asteroid hitting France or something like that?

Unless we choose otherwise, yes. And that's move to the future. What will stop inflation from coming out again?

I'm disappointed that all of official Washington is handing out dog ate my homework

excuses. Oh, it was a supply shock. Oh, greed, monopoly, price gouging, who knows what. We couldn't do

anything about it. That means it'll happen again. And I think the first step to it not happening

again is to own up to what happened in the last time, which was not easy

choices. You have a pandemic. We could have another pandemic. Bird flu could turn into another

pandemic. The Fed and Treasury will be faced with hard choices. There could be supply shocks again.

You know, a big trade war could break out and it's hard to get stuff. Prices go up. The Fed will be

faced with hard choices. The inflation that happened's hard to get stuff. Prices go up. The Fed will be faced with hard choices.

The inflation that happened was due to hard choices. The choice to meet the COVID with rivers

of money to send out money to every registered voter and keep the economy afloat. No money at all would

have been a real problem. We would have had a wave of bankruptcies, a recession, lots of people hurting.

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