I bet the Noble Absolute Return ETF's adviser is regretting this ETF's "NOPE" ticker symbol. According to the fund's web site--https://noble-funds.com/--it's: "An ETF built on the philosophy of saying NOPE to passive investing, NOPE to ignoring valuations, and NOPE to asset bubbles." The ETF has declined 63% so far in 2023: https://morningstar.com/etfs/arcx/nope/performance At first, before I saw the performance, I was intrigued by the strategy, and the fund's manager, but it's hard to imagine as experienced a manager going as wrong as this one:

Mr. Noble is the Founder and Managing Member of Noble-Impact Capital, LLC, an investment advisor and sub-advisor for the Noble Absolute Return ETF.
Prior to forming Noble-Impact Capital, Mr. Noble spent more than 40 years managing institutional investment portfolios.
He began his career at Fidelity Investments in 1981, working closely with legendary fund manager Peter Lynch before becoming the initial portfolio manager of Fidelity’s international equity fund earning a top ranking spanning six years. Mr. Noble then went on to manage two separate hedge funds, each of which grew to more than $1 billion in assets.

I sometimes think if you give an active manager too much freedom, they have just enough gunpowder to blow themselves and their shareholders to Kingdom Come. This is especially so if they have no one sitting in the board room to contradict them and say, "Wait a minute, are you sure that's a good idea?" The worst part is absolute return funds are supposed to be conservative in most cases, to generate positive returns in all market environments. Nope, not this one.

these 10 HC/MC tweets are not exactly about inflation, but of interest:
https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/1626938001191313408

Related Twitter exchange (it should be open),
https://twitter.com/syouth1/status/1627288210148655105

The article singles VEDTX out for having a large cap gains distribution. Modest cap gains distributions are not all that unusual. Here's a piece on Vanguard's 2012 ETF distributions, reporting that all but one of Vanguard's bond ETFs distributed cap gains that year.
https://www.etf.com/sections/features/15419-vanguard-sets-cap-gains-on-12-bond-etfs-.html
It goes on to describe conditions in 2012 that led to bond ETF distributions, viz. "a post-crisis environment that has seen investors pile into fixed income in one-way traffic that has limited many managers’ ability to offset cap gains through sales of available low-cost-basis securities at the portfolio level." A storm perhaps, but apparently not, according to the M* piece you linked to, a perfect storm ("Such events have not occurred since [2009].")
The 2012 "imperfect" storm affected pure bond ETFs as well as Vanguard's hybrids.
Most recently, even Vanguard's broadest based bond fund, BND, had cap gains distributions in 2021 (Q2 and Q4) and 2022 (Q2).
https://digital.fidelity.com/prgw/digital/research/quote/dashboard/distributions-expenses?symbol=BND
Or take BNDX. In 2021, it had not only long term gains but short term gains.
https://infomemo.theocc.com/infomemos?number=49817
https://digital.fidelity.com/prgw/digital/research/quote/dashboard/distributions-expenses?symbol=BNDX

+1

@Old_Joe @hank In the year 1970 I was driving anything the Army wanted me to drive. Price Less no matter !

@Old_Joe … I was ”living large” in those days. Paisley vinyl top and all. Always thought you to be the more practical type. :)
Image / Funny - that $2,800 car brand new now sells for $19,900 used. Damn. Should have held on to it.

@larryB In aggregate, Wall Street doesn't care. Individual ESG managers do care, much like individuals of conscience throughout the world care about issues most overlook. It is also worth noting that deeply flawed though they may be, ESG ratings services do not rate either Blackstone or Norfolk Southern highly:
https://morningstar.com/stocks/xnys/bx/sustainability
https://morningstar.com/stocks/xnys/nsc/sustainability
The answer to these problems I would say in the investment world is true stakeholder capitalism, a term that has become anathema to the right-wing: https://investopedia.com/stakeholder-capitalism-4774323
Are there money managers who truly care about stakeholder capitalism? There are some. Most, though, merely play lip service to the idea. I would say one of the best fund shops that considers other stakeholders is Green Century Funds, especially when it comes to environmental issues:
https://greencentury.com/about-us/

Support of Environmental and Public Health Nonprofits: One hundred percent (100%) of the profits earned managing the Green Century Funds belong to our non-profit owners who run critical environmental and public health campaigns.
The organizations which founded and own Green Century Capital Management Inc are: California Public Interest Research Group (CALPIRG), Citizen Lobby of New Jersey (NJPIRG), Colorado Public Interest Research Group (COPIRG), ConnPIRG Citizen Lobby, Fund for the Public Interest, Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group (MASSPIRG), MOPIRG Citizen Organization, PIRGIM Public Interest Lobby, and Washington State Public Interest Research Group (WASHPIRG).
We are one of the first fossil fuel free, diversified and environmentally responsible mutual funds.

But the money management industry, especially in the U.S., has a long way to go before it takes what stakeholder capitalism means seriously. Shareholders will need to demand that it does for things to truly change. But also, there must be pressure outside the investment world on government to truly regulate business again, to give our regulators teeth, and insist they be utterly separate from industry with regard to influence.
I would add that Teddy Roosevelt basically had the roots of stakeholder capitalism way back when he gave his State of the Union I linked previously:https://let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/theodore-roosevelt/state-of-the-union-1902.php

We can do nothing of good in the way of regulating and supervising these corporations until we fix clearly in our minds that we are not attacking the corporations, but endeavoring to do away with any evil in them. We are not hostile to them; we are merely determined that they shall be so handled as to subserve the public good. We draw the line against misconduct, not against wealth. The capitalist who, alone or in conjunction with his fellows, performs some great industrial feat by which he wins money is a welldoer, not a wrongdoer, provided only he works in proper and legitimate lines. We wish to favor such a man when he does well. We wish to supervise and control his actions only to prevent him from doing ill.

The notion that these companies will do what's best for society, consumers, labor and the environment, if they're unregulated is absurd to me. In reality, unregulated business isn't even just bad for labor, consumers, communities and the environment. It's bad for every stakeholder, even shareholders and capitalism itself. Unregulated businesses cut corners, do things for short-term profits and bonuses for executives at the expense of long-term shareholder value and brand value when the scandals are revealed. And CEOs are sometimes comfortable hurting every stakeholder, including investors, as well as the general public.

@LB. “ Wall Street doesn’t care.”” Perhaps this isn’t the appropriate place to talk about it but how should caring guide our own investment policy? Build our own ESG fund? Find the best ESG fund? Skip Wall Street completely? That would have been my answer in 1971. But that was then.

@Observant1- That's a good story, thanks for that.

I don't know what inflation rate Paul Volker was aiming for.
The Federal Reserve has targeted 2% inflation (not explicitly at first) since at least 1996.
Several other central banks have also adopted a 2% inflation target.
The interesting history of how this came to be is noted in the article below.
Link

"When Volcker left office in August 1987, inflation was still running at 4%, far from zero, but far below the 13% of 1979 when he had arrived as Fed Chairman. Real GDP growth was strong; fed funds were 6.6%."

Link: American Institute for Economic Research

" In 1970 I walked away with a new Plymouth Fury for $2800."
@hank- last of the big spenders! In 1970 we bought our very first new car- a Plymouth Valiant, for an even $2000. It was blue.

@LarryB - interesting. I do recall interest on inventory being hard on dealers. Quite a contrast to today’s low inventories. In 1970 I walked away with a new Plymouth Fury for $2800. The dealership near Detroit was loaded with them all at that price. You even had your pick of 2 or 3 different colors.
Re the topic under discussion. I’m worried they’re going too far. Sure hope @Old_Joe is right about the Fed. Add to the “soft”, “hard” and “no landing” discussion the possibility of a double-landing. That would be what appears to be a gentle landing and recovery at first, but followed by a hard thump.
I try not to allow this kind of speculation affect my investing decisions. Suppose it has to to some extent.

So disgust by Parker in today’s age. The $1.5 million fine is way too small for labor violations. Is that considered human trafficking?

Gibson Smith is bullish on the overall bond market:
"Thanks to the significant repricing of yields and risk assets in 2022, the bond market has returned to yield levels of 5%, 6%, 7%. The market is set up for potentially good returns over the next 12 to 24 months. We could see high-single digit, if not low-double digit-type returns across the board in fixed income if things play out as we anticipate in 2023."

Yes @LarryB - For us boomers there was a bright side in the past round of inflation. Homes / real estate appreciated a lot. Depended on the mortgage rate of course. But with a fixed-rate mortgage, even at higher rates than today, some of us made out pretty well in the 70s & 80s. The labor scene, however, was a lot different. Two important changes: (1) The ability of unions to negotiate wage increases that keep even with inflation has diminished since those days. (2) Automation continues to take away many lower-skilled jobs. Fully automated car-washes with no workers on site is just one further sign of the trend. One wonders what unskilled / low skilled workers will eat?
My inquisitive mind wonders what investments might do well with much higher than the Fed’s targeted 2% inflation? Honestly I don’t know. But your reference to rising rent is intriguing.

+1.

One year rankings¹ are of little value.
Out of 49 fund families, Vanguard was ranked 21st (43rd in 2021)
while T. Rowe Price was ranked 36th (13th in 2021) in 2022.
The methodology used for Barron's annual Fund Families feature should be questioned
due to large annual rating changes and eligibility requirements².
¹ 5-Yr and 10-Yr rankings are also included.
² Only 49 asset managers out of the 854 in Lipper’s database met the criteria for 2022.

This article helps explain the European liquidity issue. Monetary / fiscal policy works with a lag. @Crash is correct that the ECB has recently tightened. However for much of 2022 its policy was stimulative. Actually, the point both the WSW guest and Forsyth make is that this stimulus is winding down.
Here’s a clip from the Forsyth piece I noted earlier (Barron’s 2/20/23): ”Much of the early-year rally also had been driven by a largely unrecognized global liquidity surge noted by Citi global markets strategist Matt King. Even as the Fed was reducing its balance sheet (aka quantitative tightening), actions by the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan, and the People's Bank of China were adding $1 trillion to global liquidity, he writes in a provocative research note.”
(Yep - I should have made this clearer in my original comment.)