World
A Peg Is Paid for in Reserves, Until It Isn’t
The promise sounds absolute—10 units of local currency for one dollar, every day, no exceptions.
Money, markets, housing and the plumbing in between
A thematic portal on how the published numbers are built and what they leave out: prices and wages, credit, housing, policy, society, trade and the gaming economy. 110 materials in 7 sections, with the earlier column kept at its original addresses.
What the published numbers say
Median household income$87,460Census Bureau · 2025 income reportPoverty threshold, family of four$31,812Census Bureau · SAIPECPI-W population coverage≈30%Bureau of Labor StatisticsGas in storage, end-October 20263,850 BcfEIA Short-Term Energy OutlookBank cost to send $200, Q4 202010.55%Bank for International SettlementsDetention and demurrage rule89 FR 14330Federal Maritime Commission · 23 Feb 2024
World
Why It Costs Four Times More to Send $200 Down One Corridor Than Another
When the World Bank reports that sending money abroad costs 6.62 percent, the number is an average.
Markets and energy
All in Markets
Markets
The Oil Chart Is Up, Your Fund Is Down—and It Never Owned a Barrel
A crude oil fund holds no barrel of West Texas Intermediate. It holds futures contracts stamped with expiry dates, and it has to replace them.
Markets
Why Electricity Costs Less Than Nothing at Noon
On a sunny spring weekend, the wholesale price of a megawatt-hour in California can slide past zero and keep falling.
Markets
The Summer Discount on Natural Gas Is a Storage Bill, Not a Bargain
The U.S. Energy Information Administration slices the natural-gas year into two neat halves: injection season runs from April 1 through October 31
Markets
An Interview with Robert Shiller
Government As Tough Love An Interview with Robert Shiller Dec 16, 2025 Brandon Adams When we observe people fall from grace, we tend to get a dopamine jolt that can
Banks and credit
All in Credit
Credit
A Mortgage Point Buys Months, Not a Rate
What makes the calculation harder than it looks is that the timeline can collapse without warning.
Credit
The Bank Failed. Your Loan Did Not.
A bank closing does not wipe out a mortgage, a car loan, or a credit-card balance. The debt moves under a published receivership process.
Credit
Why Your Savings Account Rate Isn’t Moving With the Fed
Each month the FDIC publishes a fresh set of national deposit rates. The policy rate jumps; the APY on the statement barely twitches.
Credit
The Daily Math Behind a $160 Billion Interest Bill
The statement arrives and you have paid all but $300 of a $2,000 balance. Yet the interest line reads $34.
Policy and regulation
All in Policy
Policy
Nobody Rings a Bell: Who Dates a Recession, and How Late
When the economy contracts for two straight quarters, the news runs with “recession,” instantly. Yet the United States has no such mechanical rule.
Policy
Where Each Federal Tax Dollar Actually Goes, as Far as Treasury Will Tell You
Receipts, Outlays, and the Deficit Gap The document that governs this arithmetic is the Monthly Treasury Statement.
Policy
CPI Says Rent Rose Less Than Your Lease Did. Both Are Right.
The envelope lands. The landlord wants fourteen percent more. Same day, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that shelter inflation is running at four.
Policy
The Center Should Not Hold
The title of Brandon’s previous post “The Center Can Not Hold” is ripped from the end of the famous TS Elliot poem The Wasteland .
Briefly
An Economy Grew 89 Percent Overnight Without Producing Anything
Nigeria's National Bureau of Statistics concluded its rebasing and re-benchmarking exercise in July 2014
A Container Has Two Prices: The Index and the Clock
The Drewry World Container Index reports the Shanghai–Rotterdam rate at $3,125. That buys one 40ft container, one lane, one sailing, little else.
The Social Security COLA Tracks a Basket Retirees Don’t Buy
The annual cost-of-living increase that lands in the bank accounts of more than 70 million Social Security recipients is not, in any practical sense
Why Two Official Earnings Figures Disagree
Two official earnings figures disagree because they answer different questions: the Census Bureau measures a household, the BLS an hourly wage.
Housing
All in Housing
Housing
The 30 percent rent rule began as a line in a federal ledger
It was never a recommendation, never a financial wellness target, and certainly never meant for someone with a high income.
Housing
Why Did Your Homeowners Insurance Go Up So Much?
The number that matters is on the front page of the policy, a figure most people skip past when they stuff the envelope into a drawer.
Housing
How an HOA Special Assessment Works
The special assessment letter in your mailbox did not come out of nowhere. It is the arithmetic of a funding gap the reserve study already mapped.
Housing
The Mortgage Payment Rose and the Rate Did Not: Inside an Escrow Recalculation
The piece of mail that sends a fixed-rate borrower reaching for the telephone rarely mentions the interest rate at all.
World
All in WorldWorld
Buying Shampoo from China
This past week, the WSJ reported that the CEO of alibaba.com, a business to business platform that primarily helps Chinese manufacturers connect with Western
Society
All in Society
Society
A 1963 Food Budget Still Draws the Poverty Line
A dollar figure arrived at in the first year of the Kennedy administration is still the starting point for deciding who is poor in the United States.
Society
Response for @Epicurean Deal
I can safely say that, of the 400+ people I follow on Twitter, @EpicureanDeal is one of my five favorites (the others: @pkedrosky @robdelaney @zerohedge
Society
Applying Sports Performance Analytics to CEO Compensation
While many people complain about athletes being overpaid – and certainly the make a lot of money – at least in the case of baseball it would be hard to find too
Society
My 30 Favorite Non-Fiction Books
I’m sure I’ll omit some of my favorites here. The most glaring omission from my earlier lists was The Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.
Economy of the gaming market
All in Gaming economy
Gaming economy
Who Sets Slot Machine Payback Percentage?
Nevada requires gaming devices to theoretically pay out a mathematically demonstrable percentage of all amounts wagered
Gaming economy
Where Sports Betting Tax Revenue Goes
Colorado’s sports-betting statute does not wait for the fiscal year to close before it moves money around.
Gaming economy
When a Free Bet Is Tax-Deductible, the State’s Take Shrinks
Colorado is phasing out the deduction that lets sportsbooks subtract the cost of free bets from the revenue they report to the state.
Gaming economy
Helpline Contacts Measure Demand and Visibility, Not Gambling Harm
A helpline log records calls, texts, chats, repeat inquiries, and people calling on behalf of a family member or friend.
Evergreen explainers
Three Numbers Claim Your Home’s Value. Here’s Which One to Trust—and When.
The number printed on your property tax notice is not a price tag. It is a lever inside a multi-step formula that will eventually produce a bill.
A State Betting Headline Tells You How Much Was Wagered
Headlines that scream about a record $500m month in sports betting are almost always talking about handle—the total dollars wagered
Latest materials
The full feedAre Rising Bets a New Signal for Consumer Spending?
Economists are turning to an unusual metric to gauge consumer spending trends - the flows of money on online betting platforms.
Online Gambling Gaining at Retail's Expense
Economists are warning that the explosive growth of online gambling is siphoning off increasingly large portions of household spending that would otherwise go to
UK Gambling Industry Breaks Records, But At What Social Cost?
The world of U.K. betting and gaming is booming, with record-breaking tax revenues in 2025 swelling government coffers.
The Macroeconomics of Deleveraging
The Macroeconomics of Deleveraging Brandon Adams Charles Dickens said of debtors’ prisons, “Any one can go IN…but it is not every one who can go out.” [1] In
The Center Cannot Hold
In 1998’s Shut Up and Deal , Jesse May told you all you need to know about the poker world. My book, 2006’s Broke: A Poker Novel, was an afterword.
Gary Becker and Stephen Dubner discuss organ donor markets, applying market price to immigration, US economy
I’m posting here a link to a discussion between Freakonomics co-author Stephen Dubner and Nobel Prize Winning Economist Gary Becker conducted on ExpertInsight.com
20 Favorite Works of Fiction
Continuing the theme of the week, my twenty favorite pieces of fiction….. 1. More Die of Heartbreak. Saul Bellow 2. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Oscar Wilde 3.
My Favorite Pieces of Financial Journalism
1. The Smartest Guys in the Room 2. The Big Short 3. When Genius Failed 4. Liar’s Poker 5. Barbarians at the Gate 6. Den of Thieves 7. Predators’ Ball 8. DotCon 9.
The portal, section by section
11 materialsMarkets and energyHow prices are quoted, cleared and settled — and what the quoted number leaves out.6 materialsBanks and creditInterest, deposits and loans counted the way the lender counts them.14 materialsPolicy and regulationStatistics and rules that decide public money, read as mechanics.5 materialsHousingValue, tax, insurance and the bills attached to a roof.5 materialsWorldMoney crossing borders: corridors, pegs, freight and national accounts.12 materialsSocietyIncomes, thresholds and indexes applied to households.57 materialsEconomy of the gaming marketHandle, hold, payback and earmarked tax, as the state reports publish them.110 materialsLatest materialsThe open section of the portal: everything published on the domain, newest first.
Archive of the earlier column
The rubrication the domain used before the portal was built. Every page stayed at its original address; these are the listings that lead into them.
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Also published
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