In today’s episode of “Inflation Is Totally Dead—Trust US Propaganda”, U.S. wholesale prices jumped more than expected in December as companies politely shoved tariff costs straight onto wholesalers. PPI popped 0.5%—its biggest move in three months—while the “don’t worry about food and energy” gauge sprinted ahead at one of the fastest clips of the Jubilee Year, rudely ignoring economists’ soothing forecasts. Services prices surged, especially for machinery dealers discovering inflation is great for business, and while goods prices stayed flat thanks to cheaper energy, the message was clear: inflation didn’t leave, it just went to the gym. With PPI feeding straight into the Fed’s favourite inflation metric, this was less a data point and more a reminder that price pressures aren’t cooling—they’re stretching before the next lap.

Forget the headline inflation bedtime stories—down in the trenches where investors and CFOs actually live, the spread between core CPI and core PPI flipped negative again in December. That’s month two in a row and the worst gap since March 2025, right before the great April tariff tantrum. Translation: costs are sprinting while pricing power is jogging, margins are about to feel the squeeze, and equities may soon discover that valuations, like gravity, still work.

In a nutshell, December’s PPI gut-punched the “inflation is over” fairytale: input costs are sprinting, pricing power is limping, margins are next, and gravity is warming up for equities.

🤵 The Macro Butler Weekly Digest 🤵

🌐 Free markets don’t die in revolutions—they’re quietly conscripted: the Don Roe Doctrine marks the moment capital stops roaming freely and starts serving the state. 🌐

Read more here: https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/the-don-roe-doctrine-and-the-end

While YouTube macro wizards hyperventilated over precious-metal volatility, the real drama quietly unfolded in the Middle Kingdom: China’s official manufacturing PMI slipped into contraction at 49.3, well below expectations, with non-manufacturing following it south to 49.4. This wasn’t a harmless Lunar New Year hiccup—supply weakened, demand rolled over, and business confidence took a visible hit. Translation: China’s economy stumbled out of the 2026 starting blocks, and unless policy support shows up quickly, the only thing expanding may be calls for a PBoC rate cut by late February.

Behind the PMI headline wobble, the real culprit was demand having a lie-down. Manufacturing output cooled but stayed in expansion, while new orders slid back into contraction and export orders sank further, confirming that buyers—domestic and foreign—were nowhere near enthusiastic. Confidence didn’t help: business expectations suffered their sharpest one-month drop since late 2022, suggesting policy support arrived fashionably late. Prices ticked higher thanks to commodities like copper—nice for fighting deflation, less nice if margins get squeezed downstream. Small and mid-sized firms felt the pain fastest, slipping deeper into contraction, while large firms merely limped along. Outside manufacturing, construction collapsed (officially blamed on bad weather, unofficially on weak investment), while services hovered just below expansion—less a collapse, more a tired shrug.

In a nutshell, when the drums are loud but the fields grow quiet, the wise see the truth: China’s PMIs fell into contraction not by seasonal fate but by weakening demand and fading confidence, reminding us that when policy arrives late, imbalance spreads first to the smallest pillars.

Listen to a summary of The Macro Butler weekly newsletter via podcast on Substack; YouTube; Rumble & TikTok.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/the-don-roe-doctrine-and-the-end-79f

🤵 The Macro Butler’s Monthly Meditation 🤵

🌐 What once looked like boring rocks now decide who builds, who fights, and who wins—critical minerals are redrawing the global order. 🌐

Read more here: https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/the-macro-butlers-monthly-meditation-a85

Want to know why markets boom, bust, and break your patience?

It all starts with the cost of capital.

🎓 Part 15 of The Macro Butler Financial Academy breaks down how the cost of capital drives the business cycle and reshapes investment returns—before the headlines catch up.

https://www.tiktok.com/@the.macro.butler/video/7601834505107721479

Stop guessing. Start understanding.
👉 Register now: https://themacrobutler.com/financial-academy/

In the 1970s, gold stumbled four times—each drop over 15%—in 1975, 1976, and twice in 1978. Each time, the village criers (today we call them “X experts”) declared the bull market dead. Had you listened in August 1976, you would have sold gold at $100, congratulating yourself on your wisdom. By the end of that most painful age of stagflation, gold had risen fivefold, and wisdom was found not in selling, but in sitting quietly while others panicked.

“When the gold river flows backward, the impatient fisherman sells his net.”

Ignore the Wall Street banksters shouting from the riverbank.

Learn to read the currents, not the noise.

With wars knocking at the door, gold may soon offer one of those rare, once-in-a-lifetime buying moments—for those patient enough to wait while others panic.

While the globalist Educated-Yet-Idiots hyperventilate over Donald Copperfield “threatening” Greenland’s sovereignty, geology quietly rolls its eyes: Greenland literally sits on the North American tectonic plate. Politically Danish, culturally European, but tectonically North American—sometimes the Earth itself refuses to follow Brussels’ narrative.
https://science.nasa.gov/resource/earth-greenlands-geologic-past/

To the European press—47 is guilty by definition unless he’s wiring money to migrants and apologizing for existing. So don’t expect them to mention that Greenland is geologically North American, not European, or to revisit Denmark’s quiet sterilization of Inuit girls from the 1960s through 1991.

https://www.justiceinfo.net/en/103874-denmark-greenland-traumatic-birth-control-campaign.html

Greenland isn’t vital to Europe’s security and it isn’t Denmark’s “asset” either—this tantrum is really about clinging to the last emotional souvenir of European imperialism.

Dear Investors,

Please find below the performance of The Macro Butler Long/Short Portfolio as of end of January 2026.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/the-macro-butler-longshort-portfolio-b83

Dear Investors,

Please find below the performance of The Macro Butler Strategic Portfolio as of end of January 2026.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/the-macro-butler-strategic-portfolio-212

Dear Investors,

Please find below the performance of The Macro Butler IG Portfolio as of end of January 2026.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/the-macro-butler-ig-portfolio-january-4b0

While Western “experts” shout doom for gold, Zijin Mining, China’s—and the world’s—gold master, quietly collects treasures abroad like a wise elder spreading seeds: patiently, strategically, and profitably.
Its C$5.5B ($4B) purchase of Canada’s Allied Gold brings tier-one African mines into the fold, from Mali to Côte d’Ivoire to Ethiopia, turning Zijin into a global player without breaking a sweat.

https://asia.nikkei.com/business/business-deals/china-s-zijin-to-buy-canadian-owner-of-gold-mines-in-3-african-countries

With Beijing eyeing assets beyond the USD, Zijin proves that true power grows quietly—while others just talk.