Memo to Central Bankers: Nobody Asked You

FROM: Someone Who's Watched This Movie Before
TO: The IMF, The Bank of England, and Everyone Else with a Microphone
RE: Your Bubble Warnings (Spoiler: They Won't Work)
DATE: October 10, 2025

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So the IMF and Bank of England held a joint press conference this week and basically said: "Hey, remember 2000? Yeah, we're doing that again. AI stocks are at dotcom levels. Five companies own the entire market. Gold is screaming bloody murder. Buckle up."

Kristalina Georgieva said "buckle up." The Bank of England's Financial Policy Committee released minutes that read like a paranoid journal entry: "Equity market valuations are comparable to the peak of the dotcom bubble." They even—and I'm not making this up—highlighted that the top five members of the S&P 500 are now so dominant that a correction in AI would crater the entire index.

And do you know what happened after these warnings dropped?

Life went on.

Markets shrugged. Nvidia didn't crater. No flash selling. No "oh my God, what if the BOE is right" moment. Instead, investors did what investors do: they nodded respectfully, texted their buddies that "central bankers are always late to the party," and went back to buying call options on the Magnificent Seven like they're breadsticks at a family dinner.

Here's what kills me about this: the warnings are correct. They're not wrong. Valuations ARE at dotcom levels. The concentration IS absurd. The amount of capital being poured into AI infrastructure that may never generate returns remotely close to expectations IS staggering. The fact that we're building $100 billion data centers for technology that hasn't proven its ROI yet IS the definition of a bubble.

But—and this is the part that makes you want to drink—nobody cares. Goldman Sachs immediately released a counter-memo saying "not yet." Not yet! As if there's some secret timer, some cosmic "ding," after which we're all finally allowed to panic. A 23-year-old hedge fund manager with $1.5 billion in assets is profiting off the prophecy. The smart money is betting on the bubble while it inflates, then jumping out before the bang. That's not investing; that's musical chairs played by people with Bloomberg terminals.

The real tell? Gold prices. The BOE literally called out soaring gold as a "risk indicator that investors are hedging." Investors are hedging. Do you understand what that means? It means the same people who are ramming capital into AI companies at insane valuations are simultaneously buying insurance because they know—know—something could go sideways. They're buying chips AND lottery tickets on the crash. That's not confidence. That's Vegas.

And the kicker: central bankers have no actual leverage here. The Fed can't cap AI stock prices. The BOE can't tax enthusiasm. The IMF can issue all the warnings it wants, but regulators won't do anything until after the crash, when it's too late and everyone's blaming "market structure" and "clearinghouse failures" and "unexpected correlations." That's just the script.

What I find darkly amusing is the language. "Risk of a sharp market correction akin to the dotcom era crash." Not "will," not "when," but "risk of." That's bureaucratic hedging. Say the right things, warn the right people, document that you said something when the inevitable happens, and then collect your pension.

The electricity shortage angle? Chef's kiss. That's the hidden crisis everyone's ignoring. You can't run these AI models without power. Real power. And the grid isn't built for it. Data centers consume as much electricity as mid-sized countries. If there's a power crunch—not even a crisis, just constraints—the entire AI infrastructure economy hits a wall overnight. But nobody's talking about that because it's boring and doesn't move stock prices.

So here's where we are: institutional investors know the dotcom comparison is apt. They're hedging with gold while buying dip. The central banks have sounded the alarm but have no tools to actually stop anything. And the retail crowd? They're watching a 23-year-old make money off the bubble and thinking, "Maybe I should get in."

The warnings were necessary. They were also pointless.

The real question isn't whether there's an AI bubble. Everyone from the BOE to your barber knows there is. The question is timing. And nobody—nobody—has ever successfully timed a bubble's deflation. The smart money's betting it doesn't happen until they're already out. The dumb money's betting it doesn't happen at all.

Buckle up? Nah. We're not buckling up. We're just watching and waiting and quietly buying that gold.