Ruminations

Behind the screen

Category: Economics

  • The Tilted Playing Field

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    Kyle
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    American Producers Were Set Up To Lose Part of the “To Boldly Go” Austrian Economics Series The trade war debate produces a lot of heat and very little light — mostly because it focuses on the wrong variable. The standard analysis compares Chinese wages to American wages, finds a large gap, and concludes that the…

  • A Circus Past Its Prime

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    Kyle
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    The stool has four legs. Three are already broken. On the morning of July 31, 2026, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent sat at a Camp David cabinet meeting with a notepad visible to Reuters photographers. It read: “To Do — Buy Japanese Yen (JPY) $5-10 bil.” The Treasury acted within hours. The New York Fed executed…

  • The Battery Nobody Is Building

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    Kyle
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    AI data centers have a power and water problem Future of AI Series This week the Danube River broke its own record. Not for volume or velocity — for absence. At Budapest the gauge read 23 centimeters. The previous record, set in 2018, was itself one meter below the hundred-year minimum water level used as…

  • AI Data Center Supply Constraints

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    Kyle
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  • Global Supply Lost by the Strait of Hormuz Closure

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    Kyle
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    Share of global supply tied to the Hormuz region Helium 33%, Sulfur/sulfuric acid feedstock 24%, Naphtha 24%, Oil 21%, LNG 20%, Aluminum 9%.

  • Same Oligarchs, Different Accent

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    Kyle
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    The Russian Mirror “Not this play again!” “We are being de-modernized.” — Russian lawyer, 1990s, as quoted by Catherine Austin Fitts Series Context This article is part of the “In a Stranger Land” series. It should be read alongside: I. The Horrifying Epiphany It happened slowly, in a London conference room, over the ordinary business…

  • Super-Governmental Organizations, part 1

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    Kyle
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    Pseudopods of the Blob If only the lie were so easily ended. “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” — James Madison, Federalist No. 47, 1788 I.…

  • The Financialization Coup

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    Kyle
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    The banquet of consequences is not fully served yet. “The process by which financial markets, financial institutions, and financial elites gain greater influence over economic policy and economic outcomes is not a side effect of capitalism. It is the replacement of capitalism.” — Gerald Epstein, Financialization and the World Economy, 2005 I. The Bait and…

  • The Apotheosis of the Dollar

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    Kyle
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    A Derivative in Search of an Underlying Asset God has seen this particular mistake before. “Now we see why governments are inherently inflationary: because inflation is a powerful and subtle means for government acquisition of the public’s resources, a painless and all the more dangerous form of taxation.”— Murray Rothbard, What Has Government Done to…

  • The Digital Control Grid

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    Kyle
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    Palantir Part 2: What the Infrastructure Is Actually For Stamping on the human face — forever “And when money failed in the land of Egypt, and in the land of Canaan, all the Egyptians came unto Joseph, and said, Give us bread: for why should we die in thy presence? for the money faileth.” —…