All Gates, All Barbarians
Geo-Everything and the Slow Death of Old Macro
This is the third instalment in Macro D’s ongoing series examining how the global macro landscape is being reshaped in real time. The original intention was to focus on the international repercussions of Maduro’s capture — across Europe, Greenland, Iran, South America, Russia, Ukraine, and China. Instead, this piece pivots to something more immediate and, arguably, more revealing: the changing style and logic of power itself.
At the centre of this instalment is the idea that geopolitics has ceased to be a discrete domain and has instead become “geo-everything” — inseparable from markets, resources, currencies, and psychology. Trump’s latest outburst over Greenland is treated not as a one-off provocation, but as a window into a broader operating system: a world increasingly driven by confrontation, leverage, and spectacle rather than process, mediation, or institutional restraint.
Macro D argues that the critical question is not what Trump does, but how he does it. The method — theatrical, coercive, and deliberately destabilising — matters more than the individual actions themselves. While many of these gestures may ultimately prove transient or hollow, their immediate impact lies in how they distort incentives, expectations, and behaviour across states, markets, and institutions.
A central paradox runs through the piece: despite escalating political rhetoric, markets remain unusually calm. Volatility has not exploded, oil has not surged, and risk assets continue to price in resilience. The explanation offered is psychological rather than mechanical. Markets, having learned from past Trump cycles, are no longer reacting impulsively. Instead, they are waiting — suspending judgement, deferring repricing, and operating within what Macro D describes as a “cycle of anticipation” rather than fear or panic.
The article then broadens into a critique of traditional macro frameworks. In a world where fiscal dominance, resource competition, industrial policy, and geopolitical leverage increasingly override textbook monetary transmission, the old models struggle to explain outcomes. GDP growth, labour-market weakness, falling PMIs, rate-cut expectations, and political pressure on central banks coexist uneasily — raising doubts about the quality, sustainability, and interpretation of growth itself.
Ultimately, this third part asks whether markets are merely patient — or dangerously complacent — and whether the apparent calm reflects genuine confidence or simply delayed recognition. As Macro D suggests, immediacy may be dead, but consequence is not. The reckoning, when it comes, may arrive not with a bang, but after a long and deceptive silence.
For the first two parts, please see below.
