economics

So when I look at this entire landscape, it seems to me that some of the basic conditions of a financial crisis are at least starting to fall into place:

1. We have a big story about why “this time is different” — the idea that AI will change everything, and that data centers will thus earn huge returns.




2. We have a large and increasing amount of debt

... See more

As the scholar Mary Gallagher has observed, Beijing has fanned the flames by using social campaigns such as “common prosperity”—a concept Chinese leader Mao Zedong first proposed in 1953 and that Xi revived at a party meeting in 2021—to spur local industrial development. These planning directives and campaigns put enormous pressure on local party

... See more

Global Liquidity is up an impressive near-40% since 2019 and by more than a whopping 125% since the 2008 GFC. To add context, the IMF estimates that World GDP across the major economies is barely 50% higher in nominal terms and a lesser 30% up in real terms.

So it’s little surprise that this excess liquidity has flooded into financial assets. Since

... See more

Right now, there are two important policy changes that have come out in 2025. The first is DOGE aimed at eliminating waste, fraud and abuse in the government. The second is tariffs aimed at making global trade more fair

Which matters more?

The chart today looks at each in terms of their size relative to the GDP of the US. The scales are different to

... See more

Re-fi dominates capital raising for new investment projects by around 3:1 and, hence, imposes a shorter business cycle than the traditional 9-10 year cycle associated with the replacement of capital goods. As a result, they suggest that the business cycle is more a cycle in the changing duration of the capital structure than fluctuations in the

... See more

In 1944, the US led other countries in putting together the Bretton Woods system, in which most currencies were pegged to the dollar, and the dollar was pegged to gold.

In 1971, however, the US defaulted on this system, rendering the dollar no longer redeemable for or fixed against gold. After that, all currencies rapidly fell vs gold, and along

... See more

In practice, except for the revenue deficit grants, the actual flow of funds remained generally less than recommended amounts by the end of the award period, which indicates that the revenue deficit grants were predictable and assured while others were not. Some conditional grants for local governments faced challenges of conditionalities and

... See more

From a politicians’ standpoint, the best realistic scenario for them is that money supply growth will be high to support the deficits as needed, but that there will be enough productivity growth from AI and other areas to offset it and prevent aggregate prices from increasing too rapidly.

The problem, however, is that even if that were to happen for

... See more

Back in the 1990s, the United States had a legal conflict regarding using encrypted communications. Phil Zimmerman developed Pretty Good Privacy or “PGP” in the early 1990s, which was free and open-source peer-to-peer encryption software. It spread internationally, and so the U.S. government launched a criminal investigation into Zimmerman for

... See more