“What goes too long”: Ursula K. Le Guin, “Dragonfly,” in Le Guin, Tales from Earthsea: Dragonfly (New York: Harcourt, 2001), 147.
animal spirits: John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1936), page 81.
reflexivity: Soros, The Alchemy of Finance.
“Evidence is always partial”: Hilary Mantel, “Hilary Mantel: Why I Became a Historical Novelist,” The Guardian, June 3, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jun/03/hilary-mantel-why-i-became-a-historical-novelist.
When there is a gap: “Consumer Confidence Declined Moderately in July,” The Conference Board, July 26, 2022, https://www.conference-board.org/topics/consumer-confidence/press/CCI-July-2022.
“Expected inflation”: Josh Zumbrun, “The Strange Art of Asking People How Much Inflation They Expect,” The Wall Street Journal, June 24, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-strange-art-of-asking-people-how-much-inflation-they-expect-11656063003.
“We do know”: Edward Chancellor, The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest (New York: Grove Press, 2022 ), 1.
“Netflix says”: Jack Farley, Twitter, October 18, 2022, https://twitter.com/JackFarley96/status/1582492334800850944.
“The most important aspect”: Karthik Sankaran, Twitter, May 31, 2023, https://twitter.com/RajaKorman/status/1663948296476577794.
“The only ‘real’ hedge”: Xiang Fang, Yang Liu, and Nikolai Roussanov, “Getting to the Core: Inflation Risks Within and Across Asset Classes,” Working Paper 30169, National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2022, https://www.nber.org/papers/w30169.
The IMF sees the shift: Serkan Arslanalp, Barry J. Eichengreen, and Chima Simpson-Bell, “The Stealth Erosion of Dollar Dominance: Active Diversifiers and the Rise of Nontraditional Reserve Currencies,” International Monetary Fund, March 24, 2022, https://www.imf.org/-/media/Files/Publications/WP/2022/English/wpiea2022058-print-pdf.ashx.
This ties into: Matthew C. Klein, “The Implications of Unrestricted Financial Warfare,” The Overshoot, March 8, 2022, https://theovershoot.co/p/the-implications-of-unrestricted.
Michael Pettis: Michael Pettis, “The High Price of Dollar Dominance: The Dollar Is the Worst Reserve Currency—Except for All the Rest,” Foreign Affairs, June 30, 2023, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/high-price-dollar-dominance.
“Waiting for the day”: Brad Setser, Twitter, May 15, 2023, https://twitter.com/Brad_Setser/status/1658122177319772163.
“If a bottle”: Samuel Hammond, Twitter, July 9, 2022, https://twitter.com/hamandcheese/status/1545636287255908353.
“The logic of why”: Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway, “Transcript: Zoltan Pozsar and Perry Mehrling Debate the Dollar,” Bloomberg, September 13, 2022, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-13/transcript-zoltan-pozsar-and-perry-mehrling-debate-the-dollar#xj4y7vzkg.
“Wine seems to just be”: Samuel Hammond, Twitter, July 9, 2022, https://twitter.com/hamandcheese/status/1545635186527846400.
“Mankind must acquire”: Bertrand Russell, The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, Volume 11: Last Philosophical Testament 1947-68 (Routledge, 1997), 81.
This 2022 chart: Derek Thompson, Twitter, June 28, 2022, https://twitter.com/DKThomp/status/1541759983536177153.
a 40 percent jump: “Wholesale Used-Vehicle Prices Increase in January,” Cox Automotive, February 7, 2023, https://www.coxautoinc.com/market-insights/january-2023-muvvi/.
Manufacturers’ profits surged: Matt Phillips, “Fewer Autos and Bigger Profits for Carmakers,” Axios, January 6, 2023, https://www.axios.com/2023/01/06/fewer-autos-and-bigger-profits-for-carmakers.
People who were used: ettingermentum, Twitter, July 14, 2023, https://twitter.com/ettingermentum/status/1679944594694324225.
“High consumer prices”: Mike Gauntner, “Customs Reports Eggs Being Smuggled from Mexico,” WFMJ, January 23, 2023, https://www.wfmj.com/story/48208074/customs-reports-egg-being-smuggled-from-mexico.
“Port truckers”: Josh Wingrove, Jill R. Shah, and Brendan Case, “Biden Races Clock and Holds Few Tools in Supply-Chain Crisis,” Bloomberg, October 21, 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-21/biden-tackles-supply-chain-crisis-with-few-tools-clock-ticking#xj4y7vzkg.
“As resources get cheaper”: Anthony Lee Zhang, Twitter, August 17, 2022, https://twitter.com/AnthonyLeeZhang/status/1559928401334616065.
“As trend GDP growth slows”: Tyler Atkinson, Victor Wei, and Xiaoqing Zhou, “U.S. Likely Didn’t Slip into Recession in Early 2022 Despite Negative GDP Growth,” Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, August 2, 2022, https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2022/0802/.
“If everyone is spending”: Matt Haig, Notes on a Nervous Planet (New York: Viking, 2018), 176.
“Tomorrow the sun”: Terry Pratchett, Night Watch (New York: HarperTorch, 2002), 294.
“The reasonable man”: George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (The University Press: Cambridge, 1903), 238.
“Do Gasoline Prices”: Severin Borenstein, A. Colin Cameron, and Richard Gilbert, “Do Gasoline Prices Respond Asymmetrically to Crude Oil Price Changes?,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 112, no. 1 (1997): 305–39, http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/borenste/download/QJE97GasAsym.pdf.
As Bloomberg reported: Faseeh Mangi and Elizabeth Low, “Pakistan Struggling to Buy Enough Diesel Due to Global Crunch,” Bloomberg, March 15, 2022, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-15/pakistan-struggling-to-buy-enough-diesel-due-to-global-crunch#xj4y7vzkg.
“Like a farmer”: Maria Popova, “Lichens and the Meaning of Life,” The Marginalian, March 25, 2023, https://www.themarginalian.org/2023/03/25/lichens/.
“Panics do not destroy”: On Credit Cycles, and the Origin of Commercial Panics. United Kingdom: n.p., 1868, 18.
As Ryan Sweet at Moody’s: Jeanna Smialek, Twitter, February 10, 2022, https://twitter.com/jeannasmialek/status/1491838792109637633.
Joseph Haubrich and Sara Millington: Joseph G. Haubrich and Sara E. Millington, “PCE and CPI Inflation: What’s the Difference?,” Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, April 17, 2014, https://www.clevelandfed.org/en/publications/economic-trends/2014/et-20140417-pce-and-cpi-inflation-difference.
They do the same thing: “Inflation Charting,” Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, accessed May 2023, https://www.clevelandfed.org/center-for-inflation-research/inflation-charting.
Politico’s “inflation cheeseburger”: Ximena Bustillo and Steven Overly, “This cheeseburger explains your bigger grocery bill,” Politico, April 13, 2022, https://www.politico.com/interactives/2022/food-prices-rising-inflation-2022/.
There are various charts: “The Markets & the Economy—What We’re Watching,” Rockland Trust, July 18, 2022, https://www.rocklandtrust.com/wealth—investments/the-markets—the-economy—-what-were-watching—-july-18-2022 [inactive].
Our work shows: Julian di Giovanni, “How Much Did Supply Constraints Boost U.S. Inflation?,” Federal Reserve Bank of New York, August 24, 2022, https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2022/08/how-much-did-supply-constraints-boost-u-s-inflation/.
The San Francisco Fed: “Supply- and Demand-Driven PCE Inflation,” Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/indicators-data/supply-and-demand-driven-pce-inflation/.
“To consider excessive”: Glenn Hubbard, “Post-pandemic Fiscal Spending Bears Much of the Blame for US Inflation,” Financial Times, November 14, 2022, https://www.ft.com/content/48d41445-544d-41e9-891f-3b50a2f1a3eb.
“sticky prices”: Francesco Ferrante, Sebastian Graves, and Matteo Iacoviello, “The Inflationary Effects of Sectoral Reallocation,” International Finance Discussion Papers 1369, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, February 2023, https://doi.org/10.17016/IFDP.2023.1369.
In 2023, Isabella Weber: Isabella M. Weber and Evan Wasner, “Sellers’ Inflation, Profits and Conflict: Why Can Large Firms Hike Prices in an Emergency?,” Working Paper no. 2023-2, 2023, University of Massachusetts Amherst, https://scholarworks.umass.edu/econ_workingpaper/343/.
Unfortunately, the Weber-Wasner: Isabella M. Weber, Twitter, June 1, 2023, https://twitter.com/IsabellaMWeber/status/1664255216080896005.
excuseflation: Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal, “How ‘Excuseflation’ Is Keeping Prices—and Corporate Profits—High,” Bloomberg, March 9, 2023, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-09/how-excuseflation-is-keeping-prices-and-corporate-profits-high.
We can look at: Apple Inc., Form 10-K, 2022, https://s2.q4cdn.com/47 0004039/files/doc_financials/2022/q4/_10-K-2022-(As-Filed).pdf.
Procter & Gamble’s Q1 2023: “P&G Announces Fiscal Year 2023 First Quarter Results,” https://s1.q4cdn.com/695946674/files/doc_news/2022/FY2223-Q1-JAS-8-K-Final.pdf.
“Two forces have combined”: Paul Donovan, “Fed Should Make Clear That Rising Profit Margins Are Spurring Inflation,” Financial Times, November 2, 2022, https://www.ft.com/content/837c3863-fc15-476c-841d-340c623565ae.
“institutional changes also hint”: Frederic Boissay et al., “Are Major Advanced Economies on the Verge of a Wage-Price Spiral?,” BIS Bulletin, no. 53, May 4, 2022, https://www.bis.org/publ/bisbull53.pdf.
“Retail markups”: Lael Brainard, “Staying the Course to Bring Inflation Down,” Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, January 19, 2023, https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/brainard20230119a.htm.
“I think we now understand”: John Cassidy, “Jerome Powell and the Fed Are Still Struggling to Understand a Crazy Economy Hit by the Pandemic and War,” The New Yorker, July 5, 2022, https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/jerome-powell-and-the-fed-are-still-struggling-to-understand-a-crazy-economy-hit-by-the-pandemic-and-war.
“Satisfaction with family life”: Stefani Milovanska-Farrington and Stephen Farrington, “Happiness, Domains of Life Satisfaction, Perceptions, and Valuation Differences Across Genders,” Acta Psychologica 230 (October 2022): 103720, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2022.103720.
The unemployment rate: “Unemployment Rate,” Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE.
When the labor force: “Labor Force Participation Rate,” Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART.
both surveys are revised: “Comparing Employment from the BLS Household and Payroll Surveys,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/ces_cps_trends.htm.
“Job openings”: Ibid.
“We talk a lot”: Preston Mui, “Quits vs. Openings: The Fed Needs to Choose Wisely,” Employ America, March 8, 2023, https://www.employamerica.org/blog/quits-vs-openings-the-fed-needs-to-choose-wisely/.
A March 2023: Te-Ping Chen, “Job Listings Abound, but Many Are Fake,” The Wall Street Journal, March 20, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/that-plum-job-listing-may-just-be-a-ghost-3aafc794.
the main reason: Aaron De Smet et al., “The Great Attrition Is Making Hiring Harder. Are You Searching the Right Talent Pools?,” McKinsey & Company, July 13, 2022, https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/the-great-attrition-is-making-hiring-harder-are-you-searching-the-right-talent-pools.
nobody wants to work for $7: “Employment-Population Ratio—25–54 Yrs.”
provides insights into: “Wages and Salaries and Benefits in Private Industry, 12-Month Percent Change,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-cost-index/wages-and-salaries-and-benefits-in-private-industry-12-month-percent-change.htm.
76.1 million Americans: “Characteristics of Minimum Wage Workers, 2021,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, April 2022, https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2021/home.htm.
As Carter Price and Kathryn Edwards: Carter C. Price and Kathryn A. Edwards, “Trends in Income from 1975 to 2018,” RAND, September 2020, https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA516-1.html.
“[The unemployment rate] is important”: Whizy Kim, “There’s No Money in Working Anymore,” Refinery29, July 21, 2020, https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2020/07/9919819/low-wage-workers-in-america-statistics.
“There is little evidence”: Dale Belman and Paul J. Wolfson, What Does the Minimum Wage Do? (Kalamazoo, MI: W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 2014), https://doi.org/10.17848/9780880994583.
If the minimum wage: Dean Baker, “What the Minimum Wage Would Be if It Kept Pace with Productivity,” CounterPunch, January 24, 2020, https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/24/what-the-minimum-wage-would-be-if-it-kept-pace-with-productivity/.
To begin with: “How Much Do You Need to Earn to Afford a Modest Apartment in Your State?,” National Low Income Housing Coalition, https://nlihc.org/oor.
This feeling of being rich: Sarah O’Connor, “The Gig Economy Is a Symptom of Bigger Problems,” Financial Times, November 9, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/a90d9ba8-4d2e-4ec4-b971-24ebebd5822d.
“In the United States”: Kellen Browning, “$388 in Sushi. Just a $20 Tip: The Brutal Math of Uber Eats and DoorDash,” The New York Times, April 9, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/09/business/uber-eats-door-dash-delivery-tips.html.
“China will compete”: Michael Pettis, “Bad Trade,” American Compass, October 7, 2022, https://americancompass.org/bad-trade/.
“The purpose of international trade”: Ibid.
In 2022…Andrew Bailey: Karen Gilchrist, “ ‘Outrageous’: Bank of England Chief Slammed for Asking Brits Not to Demand a Big Pay Raise,” CNBC, February 8, 2022, https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/08/bank-of-englands-bailey-faces-backlash-after-discouraging-pay-rises.html.
“There is a way”: G. K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G. K. Chesterton (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1936), 331.
“These are all methods”: Ibid., 332.
As Eric Basmajian: EPB Research, “My Final Thoughts on the Coming Recession,” YouTube, March 10, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roEljzOKk3I.
The reservation wage: Felix Aidala and Gizem Kosar, “SCE Labor Market Survey Shows Average Reservation Wage Continues Upward Trend—Liberty Street Economics,” Liberty Street Economics, December 19, 2022, https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2022/12/sce-labor-market-survey-shows-average-reservation-wage-continues-upward-trend/.
“What did happen”: Bryce Covert, “An Unemployment System Frozen in Amber,” The American Prospect, May 31, 2023, https://prospect.org/labor/2023-05-31-unemployment-system-frozen-in-amber/.
We have to be mindful: The Daily Shot, Twitter, November 4, 2022, https://twitter.com/SoberLook/status/1588478813058760705.
“doubling the size”: Marta Prato, “The Global Race for Talent: Brain Drain, Knowledge Transfer, and Growth,” Social Science Research Network, November 27, 2022, https://ssrn.com/abstract=4287268.
A 2022 report by Oxfam: “Ten Richest Men Double Their Fortunes in Pandemic While Incomes of 99 Percent of Humanity Fall,” Oxfam International, January 17, 2022, https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/ten-richest-men-double-their-fortunes-pandemic-while-incomes-99-percent-humanity.
According to data: “Distribution of Household Wealth in the U.S. Since 1989,” Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/table/.
add around 3.5 million: Kathryn Anne Edwards, Twitter, October 18, 2022, https://twitter.com/keds_economist/status/1582435868497051649.
Highly skilled Byzantine: Andreas Link, “The Fall of Constantinople and the Rise of the West,” February 28, 2023, https://ssrn.com/abstract=4372477.
workers with disabilities: Office of Disability Employment Policy, United States Department of Labor, “Employment of Persons with a Disability: Analysis of Trends during the COVID-19 Pandemic,” February 2022, https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ODEP/pdf/Employment_for_PWD-Analysis_of_Trends_during_COVID_2022.pdf.
In 2023: Talmon Joseph Smith, “The Greatest Wealth Transfer in History Is Here, with Familiar (Rich) Winners,” The New York Times, May 23, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/14/business/economy/wealth-generations.html.
It has an employee stock: “Publix Super Markets Inc. Employee Stock Ownership Plan, Amended and Restated as of January 1, 2007,” https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/81061/000119312508043806/dex103.htm.
“Public perception”: Molly Smith, “Your Side Hustle Is Another Sign of a Tight US Job Market,” Bloomberg, February 21, 2023, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-21/working-side-jobs-is-another-sign-of-the-tight-us-labor-market.
The economist Adam Ozimek: Adam Ozimek, “The Simple Mistake That Almost Triggered a Recession,” The Atlantic, July 5, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/inflation-jobs-unemployment-recession/674593/.
“the dream of a land”: James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America (Little, Brown, and Company: Cambridge, 1931), 238.
A house costs 4.5 times: Noah Smith, Twitter, February 13, 2023, https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1625289178803228673.
Rates bottomed out: “30-Year Fixed Rate Mortgage Average in the United States,” Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, July 28, 2023, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MORTGAGE30US.
Over half of Airbnb’s: Jamie Lane, Twitter, October 18, 2022, https://twitter.com/Jamie_Lane/status/1582420915756757000.
“By allowing”: Maia Mindel, “House Hoarders,” Liberal Currents, April 10, 2023, https://www.liberalcurrents.com/house-hoarders/.
“Westerners are fond”: Barbara Alice Mann, Iroquoian Women: The Gantowisas (Bristol, UK: Peter Lang, 2006).
Using a home as an investment vehicle: Aditya Aladangady, Elliot Anenberg, and Daniel Garcia, “House Price Growth and Inflation During COVID-19,” Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, November 17, 2022, https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/house-price-growth-and-inflation-during-covid-19-20221117.html.
An amortization schedule: “Amortization Calculator,” Bankrate, https://www.bankrate.com/mortgages/amortization-calculator/.
South Bend, Indiana: Michael Divita, Twitter, June 1, 2023, https://twitter.com/MichaelPDivita/status/1664429622371713025.
“Markets can remain”: A. Gary Shilling, “Scoreboard,” Forbes, vol. 151, issue 4, February 15, 1993, 236.
“Compared to industrial giants”: Ethan Mollick, Twitter, October 31, 2022, https://twitter.com/emollick/status/1586953770956644352.
In 2022, Vanguard: Eric Balchunas, Twitter, September 30, 2022, https://twitter.com/EricBalchunas/status/1575845193156362240.
“Investors’ decisions”: Ibid.
The efficient market hypothesis: Eugene F. Fama, “Efficient Capital Markets: A Review of Theory and Empirical Work,” The Journal of Finance 25, no. 2, Papers and Proceedings of the Twenty-Eighth Annual Meeting of the American Finance Association, New York, N.Y., December, 28–30, 1969 (May 1970): 383–417, https://doi.org/10.2307/2325486.
“Are there any people”: Elizabeth Lopatto, “Robinhood Has Figured Out How to Monetize Financial Nihilism,” The Verge, July 13, 2021, https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/13/22574133/robinhood-meme-trades-dogecoin-ipo.
“I have written”: Jamie Dimon, “Chairman & CEO Letter to Shareholders,” JPMorgan Chase & Co., April 4, 2023, https://reports.jpmorganchase.com/investor-relations/2022/ar-ceo-letters.htm.
“Financial markets have grown”: Michael Pettis, Twitter, March 27, 2023, https://twitter.com/michaelxpettis/status/1640225947399106560.
Treasury yields: Kristina Zucchi, “10-Year Treasury Bond Yield: What It Is and Why It Matters,” Investopedia, May 24, 2023, https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/100814/why-10-year-us-treasury-rates-matter.asp.
“It is not valid”: Eric C. Engstrom and Steven A. Sharpe, “(Don’t Fear) the Yield Curve, Reprise,” Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, March 25, 2022, https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/dont-fear-the-yield-curve-reprise-20220325.html.
“Nowhere does history”: Edwin Lefèvre, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (New York: George H. Doran Co., 1923), 180.
There’s a list of investing rules: Martin Zweig, “The Market Technician’s Association Monthly Meeting Notes,” Shearson Lehman, November 4, 1990 (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 1970), https://twitter.com/QCompounding/status/1630659100219416580.
“It’s fascinating”: Wasteland Capital, Twitter, November 15, 2022, https://twitter.com/ecommerceshares/status/1592441370664636416.
“Price has driven”: Lisa Abramowicz, Twitter, March 6, 2023, https://twitter.com/lisaabramowicz1/status/1632701107456692230.
“Yet these past 20 years”: Martin Sandbu, “The Investment Drought of the Past Two Decades Is Catching Up with Us,” Financial Times, July 19, 2022, https://www.ft.com/content/3a8731bc-aad3-42ca-b99e-b3a553974ccf.
“The pressure on these”: Lu Wang, “Corporate America’s Earnings Quality Is the Worst in Three Decades,” Bloomberg, March 1, 2023, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-01/corporate-america-s-earnings-quality-is-worst-in-three-decades.
“A global recession”: “Chartbook #152 The Anti-inflation Pivot of 2022—How Uncoordinated & Contractionary Monetary & Fiscal Policy Risk a Global Recession,” September 18, 2022, adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-152-the-anti-inflation.
“The NBER’s dates”: James D. Hamilton, “The Econbrowser Recession Indicator Index,” Econbrowser, https://econbrowser.com/recession-index.
For example, the inverted yield curve: Evan F. Koenig and Keith R. Phillips, “Inverted Yield Curve (Nearly Always) Signals Tight Monetary Policy, Rising Unemployment,” Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, February 12, 2019, https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2019/0212.
“Mario games teach us”: Cheesemeister, Twitter, July 13, 2022, https://twitter.com/Cheesemeister3k/status/1547440825420099586.
“The problem with the banks”: Eryn Brown, “A ‘Subprime’ Crisis in Housing? Think Again,” Knowable Magazine, November 7, 2018, https://doi.org/10.1146/knowable-110718-39.
The recession of 2020–2021: “NBER Based Recession Indicators for the United States from the Period Following the Peak Through the Trough,” Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USREC.
“unable to cover debt servicing”: Ryan Niladri Banerjee and Boris Hofmann, “The Rise of Zombie Firms: Causes and Consequences,” BIS Quarterly Review, September 23, 2018, https://www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r_qt1809g.htm.
For example, the number of Americans: “2022 General Social Survey,” NORC, https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org/trends?category=Current%20Affairs&measure=natheal.
We have three different definitions: Matt Darling, Twitter, Jan 11, 2024 https://twitter.com/besttrousers/status/1745464553100792024?s=20.
“There are known knowns”: Donald Rumsfeld, “Known and Unknown: Author’s Note,” The Rumsfeld Papers, https://papers.rumsfeld.com/about/page/authors-note.
“Fascism talks ideology”: Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2019), 16.
“I believe if there’s”: Before Sunrise, directed by Richard Linklater, 1995.
But taxpayers in the United Kingdom: Nichola Rutherford, “Scottish Budget: How Will the Changes Affect You?,” BBC News, December 15, 2022, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-63635369.
Similarly to the United States: Kate Dore, “Inflation Boosted the 2023 Federal Income Tax Brackets. Here’s How Your Taxes May Compare to 2022,” CNBC, March 6, 2023, https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/06/inflation-boosted-the-2023-federal-income-tax-brackets.html.
it has moved the debt ceiling: Olivier Blanchard, “Public Debt and Low Interest Rates,” American Economic Review 109, no. 4 (April 2019): 1197–1229. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.109.4.1197.
In one example: Christopher Whittall, “Update: LDI Selling Forces BoE to Intervene in Gilt Market,” IFR, September 28, 2022, https://www.ifre.com/story/3533046/ldi-selling-forces-boe-to-intervene-in-gilt-market-v0jbjvpwvh.
“There should be”: Dow, Twitter, July 31, 2023, https://twitter.com/mark_dow/status/1685997944858910720.
“to the astonishment”: Peter Spiegel, “How the Euro Was Saved—FT Series.” Financial Times, May 11, 2014, https://www.ft.com/content/f6f4d6b4-ca2e-11e3-ac05-00144feabdc0.
“We are spinning”: William James, Habit (New York: H. Holt, 1890), 67.
“Oil prices not only”: Harry Robertson, “The US Oil Price Turned Negative a Year Ago Today. Analysts Now Sees [sic] It Rising 20% to above $75 as Countries Plot a Return to Normality,” Business Insider, April 21, 2021, https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/oil-prices-negative-year-ago-analysts-bullish-recovery-vaccine-opec-2021-4-1030324288.
The tool kit has to: “Rethinking the Fed’s 2 Percent Inflation Target,” Brookings Institution, https://www.brookings.edu/collection/rethinking-the-feds-2-percent-inflation-target/.
“In Turkey, central bank independence”: Sandra Ahmadi and Aseem Prakash, “Autocrats Are Exploiting COVID-19 to Weaken Central Bank Independence,” Foreign Policy, January 10, 2022, https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/10/covid-19-pandemic-economy-central-bank-independence-turkey-china-monetary-policy/.
There are a lot: Skanda Amarnath and Alex Williams, “What Are You Expecting? How the Fed Slows Down Inflation Through the Labor Market,” Employ America, February 9, 2022, https://www.employamerica.org/researchreports/how-the-fed-affects-inflation/.
“Conventional wisdom”: David Ratner and Jae Sim, “Who Killed the Phillips Curve? A Murder Mystery,” Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, May 2022, https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/who-kill [inactive].
“positive for risk assets”: James Ashley and Simona Gambarini, “Is 3% the New 2%? Sizing Up a Scenario of Higher Inflation Targets,” Goldman Sachs Asset Management, November 10, 2022, https://www.gsam.com/content/gsam/us/en/institutions/market-insights/gsam-insights/2022/is-3-percent-the-new-2-percent.html#section-none [inactive].
The dynamic between: Nick Timiraos, “Cash-Rich Consumers Could Mean Higher Interest Rates for Longer,” The Wall Street Journal, October 30, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/cash-rich-consumers-could-mean-higher-interest-rates-for-longer-11667075614.
He went on TV: Robert Smith et al., “How 2% Became the Target for Inflation,” NPR, December 22, 2022, https://www.npr.org/2022/12/22/1145096244/how-2-became-the-target-for-inflation.
But of course: “Federal Reserve Board and Federal Open Market Committee Release Economic Projections from the December 13–14 FOMC Meeting,” Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, December 14, 2022, https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/monetary20221214b.htm.
“An unwarranted easing”: Courtenay Brown, “Fed Chair Says Low Interest Rates Aren’t Driving Stock Market Prices,” Axios, January 27, 2021, https://www.axios.com/2021/01/27/fed-jerome-powell-low-interest-rates-stock-market.
“I certainly was not excited”: Joe Weisenthal, Tracy Alloway, and Jonnelle Marte, “Neel Kashkari ‘Happy’ to See the Stock Market’s Reaction After Jackson Hole,” Bloomberg, August 30, 2022, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-29/neel-kashkari-happy-to-see-the-stock-market-s-reaction-to-jackson-hole.
When he was erroneously told: Andy West, Twitter, November 2, 2022, https://twitter.com/andycwest/status/1587912245656551425.
“Here is what I learned”: C. J. Hauser, “The Crane Wife,” The Paris Review, July 16, 2019, https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/07/16/the-crane-wife/.
“Economists and economic policymakers”: Jeremy B. Rudd, “Why Do We Think That Inflation Expectations Matter for Inflation? (And Should We?),” Federal Reserve, Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2021-062, 2021, https://doi.org/10.17016/FEDS.2021.062.
Low rates aren’t dangerous: J. W. Mason, “At Barron’s: Are Low Rates to Blame for Bubbles?,” April 21, 2023, https://jwmason.org/slackwire/at-barrons-are-low-rates-to-blame-for-bubbles/.
“The amount of energy”: Alberto Brandolini, Twitter, January 11, 2013, https://twitter.com/ziobrando/status/289635060758507521?lang=en.
“Inflation is always”: Milton Friedman, “The Counter-revolution in Monetary Theory,” Wincott Memorial Lecture, Institute of Economic Affairs, Occasional Paper 33, 1970, https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/internal/media/dispatcher/214480/full.
“Does Money Growth”: Claudio Borio, Boris Hofmann, and Egon Zakrajšek, “Does Money Growth Help Explain the Recent Inflation Surge?,” BIS Bulletin, no. 67, January 26, 2023, https://www.bis.org/publ/bisbull67.pdf.
“The less you eat”: Karl Marx, “Human Requirement and Division of Labour Under the Rule of Private Property” in Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1844), 112.
“ ‘There’s something about’ ”: Andre Dubus, Dancing After Hours (New York: Vintage, 1996), 191.
“Find out what makes”: George Saunders, Congratulations, by the Way: Some Thoughts on Kindness (New York: Random House, 2014), 50.
“What we have then”: Peter Turchin, “The Strange Disappearance of Cooperation in America,” June 21, 2023, https://peterturchin.com/strange-disappearance/.
political stagnation: Bryan Caplan, Twitter, February 10, 2021, https://twitter.com/bryan_caplan/status/1359547307503550467.
Higher education has become: “Fast Facts: Tuition Costs of Colleges and Universities,” National Center for Education Statistics, https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=76.
“Impossible, I realize”: Paul Auster, The Invention of Solitude (New York: SUNY Press, 1982), 17.
“From addiction to dementia”: “Mental Health Matters,” The Lancet Global Health 8, no. 11 (November 2020): e1352, https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(20)30432-0.
“Once the mascot”: Ibid.
“an inchoate sense”: Erik Baker, “The Age of the Crisis of Work,” Harper’s Magazine, June 2023, https://harpers.org/archive/2023/05/the-age-of-the-crisis-of-work-quiet-quitting-great-resignation/.
The younger generations were furious: “About,” Occupy Wall Street, http://occupywallst.org/about/.
Gen Z: “List of Recessions in the United States,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States.
physical third spaces: Allie Conti, “Do Yourself a Favor and Go Find a ‘Third Place,’ ” The Atlantic, April 4, 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/04/third-places-meet-new-people-pandemic/629468/.
The younger generations: Sophie, “Hyper Individualization,” Inevitability Research, July 8, 2023, https://www.inevitabilityresearch.com/p/hyper-individualization.
Whether it is tulip bulbs: Lorraine Boissoneault, “There Never Was a Real Tulip Fever,” Smithsonian Magazine, September 18, 2017, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/there-never-was-real-tulip-fever-180964915/.
The Golden Age of Grift: Jack Raines, “The Golden Age of Grift,” Young Money, November 17, 2021, https://youngmoneyweekly.substack.com/p/the-golden-age-of-grift.
But that era: Zia Qureshi, “The Rise of Corporate Market Power,” Brookings Institution, May 21, 2019, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-rise-of-corporate-market-power/.
Advertising became: T. J. Jackson Lears, “The Rise of American Advertising,” The Wilson Quarterly 7, no. 5 (Winter 1983): 156–67, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40257575.
Eyeballs became: Thales X. Teixeira, “The Rising Cost of Consumer Attention: Why You Should Care, and What You Can Do About It,” Working Paper, Harvard Business School, January 2014, https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=46132.
the dot-com bubble: Eli Ofek and Matthew Richardson, “DotCom Mania: The Rise and Fall of Internet Stock Prices,” Journal of Applied Corporate Finance 15, no. 43 (June 2003): 1113–37, https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~eofek/DotComMania_JF_Final.pdf.
236 People we titled: “COVID-19: Essential Workers in the States,” National Conference of State Legislatures, January 11, 2021, https://www.ncsl.org/labor-and-employment/covid-19-essential-workers-in-the-states.
For the past forty years: Juhohn Lee, “Why American Wages Haven’t Grown Despite Increases in Productivity,” CNBC, July 19, 2022, https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/19/heres-how-labor-dynamism-affects-wage-growth-in-america.html.
When we started getting: Chris Capossela, “To Get People Back in the Office, Make It Social,” Harvard Business Review, September 22, 2022, https://hbr.org/2022/09/to-get-people-back-in-the-office-make-it-social.
For trade school graduates: Emily Pontecorvo, “To Ditch Fossil Fuels, We’ll Need to Raise an Army of Electricians,” Mother Jones, April 18, 2023, https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2023/04/electrician-shortage-training-inflation-reduction-act-fossil-fuels/.
Hence, the rise: “Gig Economy: Definition, Factors Behind It, Critique & Gig Work,” Investopedia, October 2022, https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/gig-economy.asp.
The Experience Machine: Andy Clark, The Experience Machine (New York: Pantheon, 2023), 103.
“I don’t actually think”: Amanda Ripley, “I Stopped Reading the News. Is the Problem Me—or the Product?,” The Washington Post, July 8, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/08/how-to-fix-news-media/.
their 2022 paper: David Rozado, Ruth Hughes, and Jamin Halberstadt, “Longitudinal Analysis of Sentiment and Emotion in News Media Headlines Using Automated Labelling with Transformer Language Models,” PLOS ONE 17, no. 10 (2022): e0276367, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0276367.
“We live in a world”: Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (The Body, in Theory: Histories of Cultural Materialism), translated by Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 79.
As Anne Applebaum: Anne Applebaum, “Putin Is Caught in His Own Trap,” The Atlantic, June 25, 2023.
Boym again: Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, 351.
in her book: Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 103.
In 2013, Peter Turchin: Peter Turchin, “The Strange Disappearance of Cooperation in America,” June 21, 2023, https://peterturchin.com/strange-disappearance/.
“There is no bill”: Tom Nichols, Twitter, December 5, 2022, https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1599977886613635075.
As Juan Enriquez: Juan Enriquez, “In the U.S. Healthcare Industry, a Slow Shift toward Prevention,” Scientific American, December 2022, https://www.scientificamerican.com/custom-media/the-new-science-of-wellness/in-the-u-s-healthcare-industry-a-slow-shift-toward-prevention/.
As of May 2022: Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor. (2022). Occupational employment and wages, May 2022, 39-9011 Childcare Workers. Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes399011.htm [inactive].
Suddath explained: Terry Gross, “As Child Care Costs Soar, Providers Are Barely Getting by. Is There Any Fix?,” Fresh Air, December 16, 2021, https://www.npr.org/2021/12/16/1064794349/child-care-costs-biden-plan.
Wealth building through homeownership: Jerusalem Demsas, “The Homeownership Society Was a Mistake,” The Atlantic, December 20, 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/12/homeownership-real-estate-investment-renting/672511/.
as Edward Leamer discussed: Edward Leamer, ”Housing Is the Business Cycle” (working paper, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, September 2007, https://doi.org/10.3386/w13428.
A 2013 report: American Public Transportation Association (2013), “The Role of Transit in Support of High Growth Business Clusters in the U.S.,” https://www.apta.com/research-technical-resources/economic-impact-of-public-transit/.
A 2015 study: Andrew Owen, Brendan Murphy, and David M. Levinson, “Access Across America: Transit 2015,” University of Minnesota, Center for Transportation Studies.
In a widely cited: Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren, “The Impacts of Neighborhoods on Intergenerational Mobility I: Childhood Exposure Effects,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 133, no. 3 (August 2018), 1107–1162, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjy007.
Multiple studies: American Public Transportation Association: 2014 Update, “Economic Impact of Public Transportation Investment,” May 2014, https://www.apta.com/research-technical-resources/economic-impact-of-public-transit/.
But carrying that truth: Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, 30th Anniversary Edition (New York: TarcherPerigee, 2016).
“We are not superior”: Norm Macdonald, Twitter, April 10, 2019, https://twitter.com/normmacdonald/status/1116159872393867265.
“But in the end”: Kazuo Ishiguro, “My Twentieth Century Evening – and Other Small Breakthroughs: The Nobel Lecture,” The Nobel Foundation, December 7, 2017, https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/ishiguro-lecture_en-1.pdf.
“are degraded”: “Ivan Illich: Conviviality (1973),” Panarchy, https://www.panarchy.org/illich/conviviality.html.
As Maria Popova: Maria Popova, “On the Soul-Sustaining Necessity of Resisting Self-Comparison and Fighting Cynicism: A Commencement Address,” 2016, https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/05/16/annenberg-commencement/.
Iain McGilchrist: Iain McGilchrist, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World (Dagenham, U.K.: Perspectiva Press, 2021).
Mary Gaitskill: Mary Gaitskill, Somebody with a Little Hammer: Essays (New York: Vintage, 2017), 82.
Ursula K. Le Guin: Ursula K. Le Guin, Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books (Easthampton, MA: Small Beer Press, 2016), page 30.