Category: Uncategorized

While sifting through some material on the yield curves, I came across a framework that I found more useful than the usual “is it inverted?” discussion. That question comes up a lot. But on its own, it doesn’t really help with positioning. A far more practical way to utilize the curve is to ask the…

Debates over the Federal Reserve may feel modern, but America’s first great battle over central banking happened nearly two centuries ago. President Andrew Jackson faced off against Nicholas Biddle, head of the Second Bank of the United States, in what became known as the “Bank War.” It was a fight over money, power, and democracy…

I was brainstorming with a friend the other day, and she was puzzled by something that I think many people find counterintuitive: how the Federal Reserve creates reserves seemingly “out of thin air” when it buys Treasuries, and then pays interest on those reserves. It’s one of those quirks of the financial system that sounds…

For some time now, I’ve observed a curious trend: on nights when sleep eludes me, my hunger seems to ramp up. As someone committed to maintaining a relatively lean physique, I’ve often pondered the underlying mechanism for this correlation. Today, I stumbled upon a study highlighting a robust link between sleep deprivation and diminished insulin…

During my sporadic research on Alexander Hamilton, I came across an interesting quote that I jotted down: A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing. – Alexander Hamilton The reason, I found this quote so noteworthy was because it so succinctly seems to capture Alexanders views on a…

In 2015, the IMF published a paper where they discuss the “Liquidation of Government Debt”. The paper specifically discusses financial repression as one of the ways to liquidate government debt. What is financial repression? Financial repression refers to government policies that aim to steer money towards government debt while keeping interest rates artificially low (below…

In his classic book, The Sovereign Individual, William Rees-Mogg argued that the advent of major technology alters the “logic of violence” and transforms how human society organizes itself. In the digital-age today, we are seeing much of that play out. However, we can go even further back to the roots of human-civilization: The Agricultural Age,…

The dawn of the Information Age is ushering in a megapolitical shift that threatens to subvert the power of the nation-state. Major inflection points in megapolitics have usually been accompanied with technological advancements that increased or decreased the costs of inflicting violence. Whether it be the rise of the mounted knight, or the emergence of The Gunpowder…