The Weekly: The Instruments Came Loose

The Weekly: The Instruments Came Loose

This was the week the instruments came loose from the things they measure. On Friday the unemployment rate fell to 4.2 percent, and it fell because 720,000 people stopped looking for work, not because anyone found it: the gauge improved by shrinking the population it counts. Days earlier a new Fed c

Weekly Light: The Instruments Came Loose — Weekly Light

The Instruments Came Loose. Monday the market still priced a September hike near 73 percent. By Wednesday Kevin Warsh had the wheel and used his first international appearance to kill forward guidance, welcoming more bond-market volatility. He leaned hawkish while the data leaned the other way, an ADP miss and the steepest dro

Brief: AI rent-extraction crashes: five camps close

June payrolls missed badly while the unemployment rate fell. Not because people found work, but because 720,000 of them stopped looking, shrinking the pool the rate measures. That paradox set the market's mood. But the day's real through-line runs elsewhere: five independent camps declared closed, r

Super Brief: Open Season on Closed AI — Super Brief

Open Season on Closed AI. Within twenty-four hours, five people with nothing in common said the same thing. The Open Frontier Collective warned of a world where a handful of private companies decide who can work at the frontier. Yann LeCun replied that foundation models are becoming infrastructure and "will inevitably become

Super Brief: The Guidance Vacuum — Super Brief

The Guidance Vacuum. In his first international outing at the ECB's Sintra forum, Warsh killed forward guidance: the Fed will no longer "manage expectations," and he said he would welcome more bond-market volatility. The 10-year jumped roughly 3 basis points to 4.47 percent on the spot. The structural read is that forwa