Is Inflation About to Get Much Worse?

This episode opens with a market-vs-consumer disconnect: equities are near highs while US consumer sentiment is described as extremely weak. Boyle argues the immediate trigger is the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the oil spike, but he says the deeper inflation problem predates the conflict and is structural. He frames the video around a book by Manoj Pradhan and Charles Goodhart, which argues that the last 30 years of low inflation were driven less by central-bank skill than by favorable demographics, globalization, and cheap Chinese goods. Boyle contrasts two inflation channels: domestic services inflation, which tracks local labor scarcity, and goods inflation, which was suppressed by offshore manufacturing, especially in China. In his telling, the goods-deflation tailwind is fading because aging demographics, trade barriers, and geopolitics are reversing the old setup. …

1. The video’s thesis is that inflation is likely to re-accelerate because structural disinflationary forces have weakened.
2. The Strait of Hormuz / oil shock matters, but Boyle treats it as an accelerant rather than the root cause.
3. Tariffs, labor scarcity, fiscal deficits, and housing constraints are all described as additive inflation pressures.
4. Boyle argues that central banks benefited for decades from globalization and demographics, but that tailwind is now reversing.
5. He sees rising political pressure on the Fed as a major risk to inflation control.
6. Housing is highlighted as a large, underappreciated component of persistent inflation.
7. Geopolitical fragmentation and supply-chain redundancy are presented as inflationary by design.

• The thesis leans heavily on broad structural claims, but the evidence in the video is mostly qualitative rather than data-heavy.
• The argument that inflation will keep rising assumes energy, tariffs, labor, and fiscal pressures reinforce each other, but the video does not quantify how much each factor contributes.
• Boyle implies central banks are losing control, yet he does not clearly separate temporary political pressure from actual loss of policy effectiveness.
• The claim that the post-pandemic world is entering a lasting inflation regime may be directionally plausible, but the video does not address scenarios where supply response or demand destruction offsets these pressures.
• The use of historical analogies to the 1970s strengthens the narrative, but those comparisons can overstate similarity across different macro regimes.