One of Wall Street’s adages – the market does what it needs to do to prove the majority wrong – came true in the first half. Coming into the year, the NDR Crowd Sentiment Poll was in the midst of its second-longest streak of extreme pessimism on record, after 2008-09. The Bloomberg survey of 25 Wall Street strategists showed a negative S&P 500 target for the first time since its inception in 1999. In spite of or perhaps because of this pessimism, the market staged one of its best first halves on record.

Are we shifting, slowly but relentlessly towards a multipolar or at least a bipolar currency regime ? That highly strategic debate has been open for quite some time now which leads some observers to conclude – a bit hastily maybe – that this is some kind of never-ending story. In other words, the lack of truly credible alternatives to the US dollar implies, according to them, that the whole debate is bound to remain essentially theoretical, however convincing the arguments for enhanced polarity may objectively be and grow in credibility.

Contrary to a widespread belief, the true ultimate driver of long-term inflation is not commodity prices nor supply chain disruption. It is wages. That is because inflation is essentially a redistribution of wealth between owners of financial assets and other creditors on the one hand, to workers, producers of tangible goods or debtors on the other. Such redistribution depends on the balance of power between those stakeholders.