Gromen’s (FFTT) three-year thesis: “the pace of productivity gains from AI and robotics are fundamentally incompatible with our debt-based monetary system.” The mechanism, in Grok’s reply-summary (09/2026): money is created as loans repaid with interest, so the system needs steady nominal growth or mild inflation to stay serviceable; AI raises output while cutting labour and wages, which is deflationary — falling prices raise real debt burdens, defaults climb, and a job-dependent tax base shrinks under fixed sovereign debts. Fisher’s debt-deflation with a new cause. The maximal version (rationalaussie, 09/2026): the wage economy, 30-year mortgages and career ladders don’t survive a world where selling labour has negative value — “collapse.”
The check that matters: Gromen offers the rising yields in western sovereign markets as the symptom. But productivity deflation would rally bonds, not sell them — the 1870– 1900 US grew fast under falling prices and a gold standard (memory). The thesis only squares with the tape if the state pre-empts deflation by inflating first, i.e. the argument collapses into Fiscal dominance and the Debasement trade, and the yields are pricing that response rather than the deflation. Worth holding as a “which shock” question next to Stock-bond correlation flips with the shock type: AI as supply shock (good deflation) vs. the fiscal answer to it (inflation). FFTT sells a macro letter; this is its flagship frame.