James Aitken
Founder & Managing Partner, Aitken Advisors · 6 appearances on the record.
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analystfounderaitkenadvisors.com ↗
James Aitken founded Aitken Advisors in 2009, operating a macroeconomic consultancy that advises institutional investors and sovereign pools of capital. He previously worked at AIG Financial Products and UBS, where he authored the widely followed market analysis memo Notes from a Small Island.
108statements → 61claims → 25claims resolved → 76%fully supported → 3.68/5average certainty → 2.63/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 21said about them ↓
19 supported 3 partly supported 3 contradicted 36 not checkable as stated how the 61 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
31 predictions · 30 assertions · 24 opinions · 22 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 61 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 25 are resolved, and 36 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.
The record, in short
What the tape says about how James argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
Their most notable supported claim
Aitken: Investors will absorb all US Treasury bond issuance through 2025
“Who's going to buy all these bonds that the United States is selling in 2023, 20 24, 2025 with a rising budget deficit before the recession comes?
And my answer is everybody.
Everybody.
You give people the right incentive, the right coupon, they will buy it.”
Their most notable contradicted claim
Expressed certainty vs assessment result
weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet
How they sound: not measured why? →
We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of James Aitken on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.
Everything James Aitken said on Capital Allocators that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Freezing Russia's foreign reserves will not end US dollar hegemony
“Look, I don't know, Ted, but I think the ramifications of what's just happened in terms of sanctions, the speed with which these sanctions have been put together, and what it means for asset allocators worldwide, I don't think we'll fully understand for some t…”
Commodity-tilted portfolios will outperform amid rising global resource nationalism
“Suffice to say, I would imagine that portfolios that continue to be structurally turned towards commodity and resources are going to do well, because I think we're probably on the front edge of a sustained period of commodities nationalism, which serves to bro…”
Aitken: Low Rates and Regulation Drove Unconstrained Shadow Banking Leverage
“The cool eye of financial history might conclude that by driving interest rates to ridiculously low levels, while simultaneously driving financial intermediation out of prudentially regulated banks, We or policymakers perhaps effectively uncapped leverage in t…”
Aitken: Volatility Scaling Relies on the Fallacious 'Slower Fool Theory'
“Volatility scaling, or the assumption of volatility scaling, I think had a large hand in the disruption we've seen, and just to finish this point, there was a marvelous article written in the autumn of 1987 by an extraordinary Chicago trader called Richard Den…”
Aitken: Fed's surprise rate cut triggered Treasury basis trade unwind
“And then, surprisingly for a lot of people, what promulgated the colossal unwind of all these RV positions was the Fed cutting those 50 basis points the other week out of the blue.”
Aitken: US will likely implement yield curve control and semi-permanent QE
“We're going to have interest rates at very low levels. We're probably going to have some element of yield curve control in the United States. I don't know yet, but some element of asset purchases are going to be semi-permanent from the Fed, which probably serv…”
Aitken: Financial risk has shifted from banks to non-bank institutions
“Over the past 12 years, we have, as intended, transferred all the risk to non-bank financial institutions. So the risk is now in non-bank financial institutions and often in vehicles that own illiquid assets with daily liquidity, which is absolutely absurd.”
Aitken: Trapped LPs Short Public Asset Manager Stocks to Hedge Exposures
“If I'm an allocator to a particularly large buy side firm, and I say to myself, gosh, I can't redeem, but how do I justify to my superiors that I've done my best to hedge? I start shorting that stock. And I know it's absurd, but I've actually seen it happen ov…”
James Aitken: Non-renewable capital costs will rise as renewables re-rate aggressively
“The cost of capital for non-renewable businesses is going to go up, and the cost of capital for renewable businesses is going to go down, and obviously, Ted, in a low interest rate world, the multiplier effect of that is going to be profound, because the re-ra…”
Aitken: UK and EU Will Have Framework Trade Deal by Summer 2020
“I think there's a good chance that we have the bare bones of a deal, if you will, about the future relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union.
I think we have the bare bones of a deal by the summer.”
James Aitken advises investors to bet on China's financial deleveraging success
“If the past two and a half years is a rough guide on the ability of Chinese financial officials to pull this all off, you would bet with them, not against them.”
Aitken: Core US-China trade war issues are impossible to resolve
“The trade war is not easy to resolve. We've probably got it what I think of as a phase 0.5 deal. The bare minimum coming very soon. A bigly good signing ceremony and, you know, the usual circus and theater as we come to expect. But the rest of it's impossible …”
Japanese Dollar Lending Lubricates Global Money Markets and Boosts Float
“How Japanese institutions are lending their dollars in a much greater scale, which is lubricating global money markets and increasing the float of dollars.”
Post-Crisis Bank Regulation and Central Bank Policies Operate at Cross Purposes
“There's an obvious feedback loop between post-crisis regulation and what central banks have been trying to do. In fact, you might argue they're at cross purposes.”
China Cannot Aggressively Deleverage Without Severe GDP Consequences
“The stock is still rising, and perhaps I'm being simplistic, but I don't see how you ever deflate what is frankly a gigantic liquidity bubble rolling from asset class to asset class inside China without some pretty stern consequences for Chinese GDP. And that'…”
Chinese Corporate Dollar Bonds Are Heavily Absorbed by Domestic Banks
“So we're told for years that all these Chinese property companies and Chinese corporations are borrowed in dollars. If the dollar goes up and the Fed tightens policy, they're in, in a world of pain. And this young man managing a Chinese bank balance sheet in B…”
Italian Bond Spreads Imply a 30% Risk of Tactical Default
“At 300 over Bunz, effectively, that is implying, I mean, this is subjective, but effectively implying a 30% probability of some kind of re-denomination or tactical default in Italy.”
Assuming Long-Term Rates Can Only Fall Is Global Markets' Biggest Risk
“I think the number one risk is the assumption that long-term interest rates can only go down. That's the number one risk. That underpins, I think, Nearly every major asset allocation around the world. The assumption that we are perpetually mired in some sort o…”
Federal Reserve Terminal Rate Will Hit at Least 300 Basis Points
“So Fed funds doesn't get to 525 basis points like it did in O six. It gets to something like, oh, let's say, 300, which I think would surprise some people if we got there, but that's where I think it's the minimum.”
Aitken: Trade deals are too late to stop capex and consumer fallout
“Even if this weekend we get big, beautiful tariff trade negotiations with Japan and South Korea and maybe some others, it's too late. To arrest the jolt to confidence, the jolt to capex, the jolt to business spending, the jolt that will soon start to impact co…”
Aitken: Leverage ratio deregulation will dramatically improve Treasury market functioning
“When Scott eventually gets to deregulation and freeing up some of the constraints in the leverage ratio, it should serve to dramatically improve the functioning of the treasury market, and that would be a good thing.”
Aitken: Fallout From Historic Rate Hikes Has Been Remarkably Limited
“It's been a very remarkable three years and a very remarkable 18 months, because I don't think any of us would have imagined that in the context of the most rapid rate hikes any of us have experienced, that the fallout of that could be so limited.”
Aitken: COVID-19 stimulus permanently shifted fiscal policy toward persistent intervention
“I'm afraid what that has probably done is reset expectations of what fiscal policy can do and how it can be deployed in future downturns. So now it's out of the box. Fiscal policy is probably going to be more proactive and generally stimulative. And that makes…”
Aitken: US household debt health is at a 20-year high
“And then when we compare Historical episodes of US households being overextended, not just with mortgages, but with credit cards and everything else. They're in very good shape compared to any time, certainly in the past 20 years in terms of credit card borrow…”
The other half of the tape: James Aitken's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 21 times in 12 episodes on Capital Allocators. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Ted Seides 21
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
2020 20 mentions in 11 episodes 2 per episode
- Sustainable Investing 10: Hiro Mizuno – Changing the Game (Capital Allocators, EP.148)
- Sustainable Investing 9: Reuben Munger – Private Capital Perspective (Capital Allocators, EP.147)
- Sustainable Investing 8: Lauren Taylor Wolfe – Activist Perspective (Capital Allocators, EP.146)
- Sustainable Investing 7: Tony Davis – Hedge Fund Perspective at Inherent Group (Capital Allocators, EP.145)
- Sustainable Investing 6: Richard Lawrence - ESG Integration at Overlook (Capital Allocators, EP.144)
- Sustainable Investing 5: David Blood - Pioneering a Generation (Capital Allocators, EP.143)
- Sustainable Investing 4: Emanuel Citron – Sourcing Sustainable Managers (Capital Allocators, EP.142)
- Sustainable Investing 3: Bob Litterman – Pricing Climate Risk (Capital Allocators, EP.141)
- 3 more episodes that year, every mention in 2020 →
Appearances (6)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| Geopolitical Uncertainty – James Aitken, Louis-Vincent Gave, and Marko Papic (EP.440) | Apr 14, 2025 | 18m |
| James Aitken – Opportunities and Risks from Monetary Policy (EP.326) | Jul 10, 2023 | 45m |
| James Aitken – Market Implications of the Situation in Ukraine (Capital Allocators, EP.239 | Mar 10, 2022 | 34m |
| James Aitken – Systemic Risk in a Crisis (Capital Allocators, EP.126) | Mar 18, 2020 | 31m |
| James Aitken – Tour Around the World from a Small Island (Capital Allocators, EP.122) | Feb 10, 2020 | 53m |
| James Aitken – Macro Strategist Extraordinaire (Capital Allocators, EP.58) | Jun 25, 2018 | 1h 9m |