Inflation Cooled. The Debt Did Not.

Inflation came in soft. PPI first, then CPI at 0.1% for the month. Mohamed El-Erian put the chance of a September hike around one in three. Michael Kantrowitz said the Fed had probably peaked. By Friday Lance Roberts was using that print to argue against another hike, and Jeffrey Snider had moved toward cuts because the labor market looks fragile. Stocks went up. They could: Brent Kochuba had already described volatility as crushed, with negative gamma carrying the S&P into next week. That part is mechanical.

Look underneath and the week is less cheerful. Danielle DiMartino Booth says if you take data centers and AI spending out of GDP, the US economy is shrinking. Roberts sees wages slowing and demand rolling over. Eric Basmajian has net investment near a cycle low. Four people placed a view on growth this week. All four were bearish. Labor leaned the same way.

The one thing nobody argued about was the debt. Charlie Bilello, Peter Schiff, Booth, and Steve Hanke all pointed at the same number: the national debt is heading through $40 trillion, and spending is not slowing. Schiff thinks the Fed ends up buying Treasuries. Luke Gromen thinks they cap yields. Roberts and Andreas Steno Larsen still see inflation fading from here. Schiff, Gromen, and Booth do not. Both groups were on the page this week. The print is real. The fiscal story is louder.

Gold had four people bullish and nobody against. The dollar had four against and nobody for. That is the cleanest picture of the week. Bitcoin bounced off a low, then Brian Shannon got more careful. Jason Shapiro would rather short copper than Nasdaq — crowded, no follow-through. Oil was a CPI bump and a Hormuz headline, not a new regime. Bonds could not agree. Almost nobody talked about sectors until Friday, when Shannon marked energy and financials as the names that actually worked.