Recession Indicators

NBER Recession Charts FRED Release Calendar WSJ: Fed Statement Tracker Yardeni Charts Eurostat: Business Cycle Clock US Treasury Yield Curve Proportion of Central Banks Cutting/Hiking RatesMajor Central Banks Total AssetsWorld - M2 Supply of Four Major Central Banks Franklin Templeton: U.S. Recession Risk The Conference Board Leading Economic Index (LEI) for the U.S.The Conference Board …

Hannah Arendt: As if Speaking to a Brick Wall (1964)

Hannah Arendt: Thinking Without a Banister: ESSAYS IN UNDERSTANDING, 1953-1975 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpPMmOe3jI4 Hannah Arendt on Eichmann, Banality, Guilt & Obedience (1964) “AS IF SPEAKING TO A BRICK WALL”A Conversation with Joachim Fest FEST: Frau Arendt, do you think there is any connection between the Eichmann trial and the so-called successor trials in Germany? And in particular, …

Writing

Brandon Sanderson: 2020 Creative Writing Lectures at BYU

Totalianitarism

63% of people on average across 28 countries believe their country needs “a strong leader to take the country back from the rich and powerful” IPSOS POPULISM SURVEY: POPULISM, ANTI-ELITISM AND NATIVISM (2024) PDF Full Report Pew Research: Representative Democracy Remains a Popular Ideal, but People Around the World Are Critical of How It’s Working …

U.S. Interest Rates

CME FedWatch Tool Interest Rate on Reserve Balances 10Y yield (daily, 1-year window) 10Y yield percentage point change (weekly) 10Y yield percentage point change (bi-weekly) 10Y yield percentage point change (monthly) Real effective federal funds rate Real 10-Y yield Term Premium on a 10-Year Zero Coupon Bond Fed Interest Rate Hikes/Cuts 3-Month Treasury Bill Minus …

U.S. Economy

Consumption/GDP Real PCE: Services, durable goods, non-durable goods % Source Imports vs. real imports (note the divergence in 1975, 1980, and 2008) Shares of gross domestic product: Imports of goods and services Petroleum net exports/GDP Broad dollar index

The Forgotten History of Hitler’s Establishment Enablers

Adolf Hitler's rise to power - Wikipedia Steven Levitsky, Daniel Ziblatt: How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future (2018) Timothy Ryback: Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power (2024) The Forgotten History of Hitler’s Establishment EnablersThe Nazi leader didn’t seize power; he was given it.By Adam GopnikMarch 18, 2024 Hitler is so fully imagined …

History of the Earth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1OreyX0-fw History of the Earth Wikipedia: Geologic Clock with events and periods Source Source

Warren Buffett: Circle of Competence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd-w9H0G6nQ&t=2m16s On "The Science of Hitting" Becoming Warren Buffett Interview | Rule #1: Never Lose Moneyhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd-w9H0G6nQ&t=2m16s Becoming Warren Buffett (2017)http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6438096/ "I was genetically blessed with a certain wiring that’s very useful in a highly developed market system where there’s lots of chips on the table, and I happen to be good at that game. Ted …

Financial Ratios

Corporate Finance Institute: Financial Ratios (2021) Financial Ratio Cheatsheet (2014) financial-analysisDownload

John Mearsheimer: Great-Power Realism

Realism (international relations) - Wikipedia The tragedy of John Mearsheimer (2023) A so-called structural realist, Mearsheimer’s theory is based on five assumptions: the international system is anarchic (there is no supreme authority or nightwatchman that can limit the behaviour of states); all great powers possess offensive military capability; states can never be certain about other …

Noam Chomsky: Language, Politics, and Composition (1991) [Interview]

Language, Politics, and Composition: Noam Chomsky interviewed by Gary A. Olson and Lester Faigley (1991) Q. Recently, you told Bill Moyers that you’d “like to see a society moving toward voluntary organization and eliminating as much as possible the structures of hierarchy and domination, and the basis for them in owner­ship and control.” How can …

Noam Chomsky: “intellectuals are the most indoctrinated part of the population […] the ones most susceptible to propaganda”

Q. You have suggested that “intellectuals are the most indoctrinated part of the population … the ones most susceptible to propaganda.” You have explained that the educated classes are “ideological managers,” complicit in “controlling all the organized flow of information.” How and why is this so? What can be done to change this situation? Noam …

U.S. financial conditions

FEDS Notes: A New Index to Measure U.S. Financial Conditions (2023) Data CCC High Yield minus AAA Corporate Yield Risk Premium - difference in yields between BofA Merrill Lynch BBB and 10-year Treasury St. Louis Fed Financial Stress Index Chicago Fed National Financial Conditions Index Chicago Fed National Financial Conditions Credit Subindex Chicago Fed National …

U.S. employment

Labor demand (household survey employment + JOLTS) vs. labor supply (labor force) vs. labor demand-supply gapSource St. Louis Fed FRED"The following FRED chart plots a measure of the quantity of labor supplied (in red) and a measure of the quantity of labor demanded (in blue) for the U.S. since 2001. We use the total civilian …

U.S. oil and gas production

EIA: U.S. Field Production of Crude Oil (Weekly)EIA: U.S. Field Production of Crude Oil (Monthly) Nominal and real oil price Industrial Production: Crude Oil Industrial Production: Natural Gas Industrial Production: Oil and Gas Extraction Capacity Utilization: Oil and Gas Extraction Industrial Production: Manufacturing: Durable Goods: Mining and Oil and Gas Field Machinery Industrial Production: Drilling …

U.S. government finances

U.S. sectoral balances (2 sectors)"Every deficit of government results in a surplus where the income of households, businesses and foreigners exceeds their consumption and net investment. Those surpluses must be held as securities the government issued to finance the deficit."Source U.S. sectoral balances Source Federal Deficit/GDP Federal Deficit/GDP (quarterly NSA vs. yearly SA) Federal Debt/GDP …

Why humans are surprisingly bad at being happy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF-xvBXgqa4 How to be happier in 5 steps with zero weird tricks | Laurie Santos Laurie Santos: Why humans are surprisingly bad at being happy You might assume that we are creatures that are built to be happy. But the sad thing is that we're really not wired for happiness. Natural selection honestly doesn't care …

Annelien de Dijn: Democratic Conception of Freedom [Transcript]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHVSsZLz_L4 Annelien de Dijn: Democratic Conception of Freedom 00:00 Since Ancient Greece freedom was equated with popular self-government01:43 The Atlantic revolutions & counter-revolutionary reconceptualization of freedom as state non-interference03:40 Counter-revolutionary backlash against democracy & the birth of liberalism08:02 John Stuart Mill & tyranny of the majority vs. Jeremy Bentham & tyranny of the elites ("sinister …

Factory Girls (Lowell Mill Girls)

Lowell mill girls - Wikipedia The Voice of Industry Website BooksNorman Ware: The Industrial WorkerThomas Dublin: Women at WorkPhillip Foner: Factory GirlsDavid Zonderman: Aspirations and AnxietiesBenita Eisler: The Lowell Offering: Writings by New England Mill Women (1840-1945) When you sell your product, you retain your person. But when you sell your labour, you sell yourself, …

Benjamin Constant: The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns (1819)

Benjamin Constant: The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns (1819) PDF Wikipedia Gentlemen, I wish to submit for your attention a few distinctions, still rather new, between two kinds of liberty: these differences have thus far remained unnoticed, or at least insufficiently remarked. The first is the liberty the exercise of which was …

Evan Thompson: Two Views of the Self – No Self vs. Self-making Process

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ysuw1I-SpZU Evan Thompson: Two Views of the Self - No Self vs. Self-making Process Well, is there a self? Is there really a self? What I've been saying is that the self is a process. It's an experiential process. It's under constant construction, and I've just tried to indicate some of the ways it changes …

Noam Chomsky: Consent without Consent: Reflections on the Theory and Practice of Democracy (1996)

Noam Chomsky: Consent without Consent: Reflections on the Theory and Practice of Democracy (1996) Version 2 Video Video - Internet Archive This is the text of a lecture of the same title delivered by the author on November 22, 1996 at USP as part of IEA’s 10th Anniversary Celebration Cycle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jp741ifmz20 Noam Chomsky: Consent without …

Noam Chomsky: Freedom – Theory of Human Nature and Society | Language and Freedom (1970)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IobrSVCf3k Noam Chomsky: Freedom - Theory of Human Nature and Society | Language and Freedom (1970) Noam Chomsky: Freedom - Theory of Human Nature and Society Noam Chomsky: Language and Freedom (1970)https://chomsky.info/language-and-freedom/ In searching for a point of departure, one turns naturally to a period in the history of Western thought when it was possible …

John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (1930)

John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (1930) I We are suffering just now from a bad attack of economic pessimism. It is common to hear people say that the epoch of enormous economic progress which characterised the nineteenth century is over; that the rapid improvement in the standard of life is now going …

Annelien de Dijn: Democratic Conception of Freedom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHVSsZLz_L4 Annelien de Dijn: Democratic Conception of Freedom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGsxRdmydmU Annelien de Dijn: What We Call Freedom Has Never Been About Being Free Over the past two hundred years, freedom was transformed from an emancipatory ideal that was used to challenge the rule of political and economic elites, into a slogan primarily mobilized to protect the …