What I Talk About When I Talk About Money

The Sound of the Shadow Chair

Saturday morning. I had intended to wake up slowly, perhaps brew a pot of coffee and watch the dust motes dance in the shaft of light cutting across the living room floor. I wanted to start the weekend like a cat stretching in the sun.

But the universe, as it often does, had other plans.

At the dawn of the day, the door to the bedroom burst open. My almost five-year-old twin girls, as usual, rushed in with the kinetic energy of a small weather system. They were shouting something about their wondrous adventure of lost & found of Labubu. Behind them came Remi, our faithful first daughter of mine, her claws clicking frantically on the hardwood floor like a typist trying to meet a deadline. She jumped onto the bed, panting, looking at me with eyes that said, “The day has begun, and we are already behind schedule.”

So there was no silence. Instead, there was the smell of burnt toasts and the sound of kids playing too loudly in the other room. I stood in the kitchen, flipping fried eggs to the other side watching the steam rise and vanish into the extractor fan. My wife walked in, holding a camera lens she had been prepping for a shoot later today, and kissed me on the cheek.

“It’s a loud Saturday,” she said, stealing a piece of avocado.

“It is,” I said. “But the coffee is good.”

I retreated to my desk, seeking a different kind of noise. I opened a video from Yahoo Finance, analyzing the Federal Reserve’s next move. It wasn’t about cartoons or burnt toasts, but it was about a different kind of chaos—the machinery of money.

1. The Agitation of Light

Before I started the video, I saw a local news report from last night. Crowds had gathered on the beach in Santa Monica, not for the sunset, but for the water. The bioluminescent waves had returned—a phenomenon caused by a bloom of plankton that glows an electric neon blue when agitated. It is a defense mechanism, a chemical scream of light.

People were throwing rocks into the surf just to watch it glow, just like the crowd in the money matrix. We are poking the economy, throwing rocks at the Fed, just to see if it will light up. It looks beautiful, this “market rally,” but underneath, it is a sign of agitation.

2. The December Cut: A Foregone Conclusion?

The video began with a date: December 10th. Next Wednesday.

The market has decided, with 89% certainty, that the Fed will cut rates by 0.25%, bringing the range down to 3.50%-3.75%. It feels like a scripted drama. If they cut, no one is surprised. But if they don’t cut? The narrator was blunt: “Stocks, Bitcoin, precious metals would just nose dive.”

We are in a blackout period now. The Fed members are silent, unable to speak to the press. The odds are locked in. The market is holding its breath, waiting for the curtain to rise on a play we have all already read.

3. The Shadow Chair

But the real story isn’t about next week. It’s about next year.

Jerome Powell’s term ends in May 2026. President Trump is expected to nominate his replacement soon—perhaps even before Christmas. The frontrunner is Kevin Hassett, a man whose name sounds like the rustling of dry leaves. He wants aggressive rate cuts. He wants the money printer to hum.

The video introduced a concept that chilled me: “The Shadow Fed Chair.”

Even though Powell will still be in charge until May, the moment a new nominee is announced, power shifts. The market will stop listening to the lame duck and start listening to the shadow. If Hassett (or another dove) is nominated in January, the “Shadow Chair” will effectively be setting policy from the sidelines. The official projections might say one thing, but the market will price in the shadow’s promises.

4. The Liquidity Pump

Then came the mechanics. The Fed ended Quantitative Tightening (QT) on December 1st. They stopped draining liquidity from the system because the plumbing was starting to creak. They had to inject $13.5 billion into the banking system recently—the second-largest injection since the pandemic—just to keep the gears turning.

The narrator’s prediction was simple and cynical: Quantitative Easing (QE) is coming back in 2026. The money printer will be turned back on.

It is the ultimate “Arms Dealer” move. When the system gets stressed, they don’t fix the pipes; they just increase the water pressure. For assets like stocks and crypto, this is rocket fuel. For the value of the dollar in your pocket, it is a slow leak.

Conclusion

I finished my coffee. The house had gone quiet again. The twins were outside in the yard, chasing Remi, their shouts muffled by the glass.

We are waiting for next week. We are waiting for the Fed to cut rates, a “dovish” move that feels like a permission slip to keep gambling. But as I watched the twins run in circles, I thought about the bioluminescent waves.

We are all just waiting for the water to glow. We want the light, but we forget that the light comes from agitation. The “Shadow Chair” is waiting in the wings, ready to turn on the printer. The waves are beautiful, but the ocean is rising.

I closed the laptop. The weekend has begun. The machines are resting, but the tides—the real ones and the financial ones—never stop moving. But all of these don’t matter to my lovely kids because the weekends exclusively belong to them.

Disclaimer: I am not a cartographer, and this is not a map. It is simply a logbook of the shadows I saw while walking. I am not a financial advisor. The market is a strange, indifferent machine that does not care about our plans or our safety. Nothing written here is a recommendation to buy or sell. These are just notes from the edge of the forest. Please find your own way through the trees.