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Alhambra Investments
Company blog · alhambrapartners.comeconomicsbusiness
Alhambra Investments is the company blog at alhambrapartners.com, writing about economics and business. Since 2018, 12 different Hacker News readers have linked it 70 times, most often “Swift Not a ‘Nuclear Option’ for Russia, the World Is Eurodollar Not Dollar”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-26, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (10) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Macro-economics posts from Alhambra Partners, mostly tied to Jeff Snider's Eurodollar University series on inflation, recessions, yield curves and the dollar. Commenters link them as sources and point readers to them for more.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 10 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Our namesake is the Alhambra, a fortress in southern Spain dating back to 889. For more than a thousand years, people of different backgrounds found refuge
Most-linked posts?
- /2019/04/22/eurodollar-university-the-overview/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-08-10
- Swift Not a ‘Nuclear Option’ for Russia, the World Is Eurodollar Not Dollar2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-03-01
What Hacker News says?
Great writeup - exactly what I've been thinking about for the past year. What's the impact of US Dollar losing its reserve currency status? There's a great podcast which sparked my interest in following macro developments, touching the future of the US dollar in particular - Macro Voices - The US Dollar End Game [1] (there are 5 parts, link points to the first one). I'd also recommend listening/reading the transcrip…
Comment linking /commentaryanalysis/
on “The U.S. Yield Curve Has Inverted”Submitted Turning the Labor Shortage Up to 11 as a story · 45 points
HN discussionI think this article is just really trying string together anecdotes to fit a narrative that kind of glamorizes the incentives most people are facing now in the economy. I find the analysis here much better[0]: wrt Japan: "For all its tortured economic history since 1989, Japan has never really had an unemployment problem. Going by its unemployment rate alone, conditions don’t ever appear to be all that out of line.…
Comment linking /2018/05/04/three-point-nine-still-no-boundary-for-sanity/
on “The United States of Japan”Submitted Slowing Down, Yes, but to What? as a story · 37 points
HN discussionEveryone looks at the FED, but there's an interesting counterintuitive hypothesis out there that it's not actually the FED that has anything to do with inflation. In the 1970s, it was international credit creation by banks that was not tracked by the FED that caused persistent inflation (and their attempts to control it were futile since they were not tracking it), and now it's actually the government stimulus combi…
Comment linking /2021/10/29/inflation-history-everyone-should-know-but-only-certain-people-do/
on “Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt”Submitted Has to Be a Joke, Because If It’s Not as a story · 34 points
HN discussionGovernments are directly buying ETFs https://alhambrapartners.com/2020/03/11/what-happens-when-ce...
Comment linking /2020/03/11/what-happens-when-central-banks-buy-stocks-etfs-well-we-already-know/
on “Have the record number of investors in the stock market lost their minds?”Submitted Questioning the Already Questionable State of Global Demand as a story · 25 points
HN discussion> In this situation, large capital expenses make sense on the buyer side (to ensure future supply and widen their visibility horizon) Does it? Are these actually large capital expenses ("cash" [or credits on a bank balance sheet] is actually being locked up and transferred to the suppliers) or are these purchase orders where fractions of the cash are actually transferred at the point these long term deals are being…
Comment linking /2022/01/27/heightened-conflict-of-interest-rates-when-gdps-almost-all-inventory/
on “Chip shortages due to lack of investment in right fabs”Submitted Not Confusing or Surprising: Q1s Worst Productivity Ever,April Employed Declined as a story · 11 points
HN discussionJeff Snider from Alhambra Partners routinely makes this distinction: https://alhambrapartners.com/2021/10/13/perfect-time-to-revi... They have a great podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/eurodollar-university/... and routinely appear on finance podcasts to explain this.
Comment linking /2021/10/13/perfect-time-to-review-what-is-and-what-is-not-inflation-and-why-it-matters-so-much/
on “Estonia clocks fastest inflation in the Eurozone at 20.1 percent”Submitted China More and More Beyond ‘Inflation’ as a story · 10 points
HN discussion> It was Clinton's deregulation Eurodollar system was already alive for almost a century by then: "The first seeds of the eventual eurodollar bloom, in domestic US terms, were sown all way back in sixteen – as in the year 1916. Believe it or not, the Federal Reserve Act, then only a few years old, had been modified so that banking syndicates (those able to raise the princely sum of $1 million capital) could form wha…
Comment linking /2021/09/17/dollar-warning-update-from-the-islands-which-started-it/
on “Is the world economy entering a wage-price spiral?”Submitted BLS: We’ll Smooth the Payroll Data; ADP: Hold My Beer as a story · 7 points
HN discussionYou’re not crazy, if you want to find lots of discussion about this topic head to https://alhambrapartners.com/tag/eurodollar-university/ But to be fair to the Fed (not to excuse plenty of incompetence), the banks in 08 became close to insolvency. The ‘proper’ way to inject money into the economy would’ve required Congress to authorize a recapitalization of banks - which would’ve been political suicide.
Comment linking /tag/eurodollar-university/
on “A First Lesson in Econometrics (1970) [pdf]”Submitted Swift Not a ‘Nuclear Option’ for Russia, the World Is Eurodollar Not Dollar as a story · 7 points
HN discussionFair enough. For those of you who have other mindless things you would prefer to spend hours on in your life and have no interest outside of wanting a quick fix: ~17,000,000 million disappeared[0] from the numerator since there is a lot of flexibility in ("People are classified as unemployed if they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks, and are currently available for work."). People…
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2018/09/ABOOK-Sept-2018-CBO-2007.png
on “Fed likely to keep raising rates”Submitted Not Born Yesterday as a story · 4 points
HN discussionTake the time to read through the posts here[0] and you'll see. [0] https://www.alhambrapartners.com/category/markets/
Comment linking /category/markets/
on “Fed likely to keep raising rates”Submitted Taper Discretion Means Not Loving Payrolls Anymore as a story · 4 points
HN discussionhttps://alhambrapartners.com/2019/04/22/eurodollar-universit...
Comment linking /2019/04/22/eurodollar-university-the-overview/
on “Citi’s $900M Misfire Happened During Software Switch”Submitted The ‘Growth Scare’ Keeps Growing Out of the Macro (Money) Illusion as a story · 4 points
HN discussionIt's not the inflation component which is killing real personal income (ex transfer receipts)...it's the bad modelling which is used to generate current estimates that are subject to revisions. The revisions show the real picture, and it is not pretty. See https://alhambrapartners.com/2021/07/30/inflation-estimates-...
Comment linking /2021/07/30/inflation-estimates-pce-totally-overshadowed-by-benchmark-income-revisions-and-the-deflationary-implications-of-them/
on “U.S. Recession Probabilities September 2021: 44%”Submitted Do Bonds Accurately Price Inflation? Since Before Any of Us Were Born as a story · 4 points
HN discussionYeah Jeff Snider of Alhambra Investments knows his stuff. If you prefer text you can read all the same stuff at his “Eurodollar University”: https://alhambrapartners.com/2019/04/22/eurodollar-universit...
Comment linking /2019/04/22/eurodollar-university-the-overview/
on “The Most Counterintuitive Recession Ever”Submitted Perception vs. Reality as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThat's just because the population has been growing (yes, there are 44% more people now in the US since 1980). The employment ratio of population has steadily dropped. Economists call it the 'labor participation rate', and it has declined quite markedly since ~2000 or so: http://www.alhambrapartners.com/2018/01/05/the-reluctant-lab... See the 'Two Labor Stories' chart. "The lack of labor force growth going on nearly…
Comment linking /2018/01/05/the-reluctant-labor-force-is-reluctant-for-a-reason-and-its-not-booming-growth/
on “Robots are not very good at picking strawberries yet”Submitted Powell Admits RRP and Collateral Scarcity, Still Unaware of What It Means as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThis is a good chart (and annotations)[0] that reflects "…facts can end up being subordinated to the theoretical preferences of revered leaders." [0] https://www.alhambrapartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/...
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2018/09/ABOOK-Sept-2018-CBO-2007.png
on “The Trouble with Macroeconomics (2016) [pdf]”Submitted The Money Doesn’t *Spread* Inflation as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
