Macro Markets – Stories. Crises are met with strong opinions. Social media amplifies them with breakneck speed. There is thirst for answers and opinion fills the void. Opinions are plentiful, and the absence of scarcity should reflect their value – limited. Eventually, we settle on a story, on a narrative. Policy hopes the “safe and sound” narrative on banking sticks, being emphasized far and wide, from the Fed to the Treasury to the Philippines and the State of Maine. It’s too early to tell the story. The fact pattern is simple – past financial crises have seen a reshuffling of leverage. Every financial shock in the past 30 years has been met with lower-lows in interest rates and higher-highs in government debt. Leverage is not a resolution – it merely postpones the adjustment, kicking the can to future generations. Think of it in the context of the Fed balance sheet. In well-functioning markets, currency demand and other core functions of the Fed would put the balance sheet around $2.5-3 trillion. That figure trends lower with the introduction of a central bank digital currency. It’s more efficient. People hold less cash. Bad guys stop using it. But today, the Fed balance sheet is back on the rise, approaching $9 trillion. It would almost surely surge on a broadening of the current banking strains. What financial crises demand is deleveraging, which hasn’t happened. And without this feature, digital asset markets appeared disadvantaged last year. Now, the rapid cleansing of excesses looks more like a superpower. Undue leverage was almost instantly expunged, and business models rewritten by the force of market prices, even in DeFi. Markets do the work. Stories come after. The peril of suppressing market signals may be a good first chapter.