The Signal
The Ceasefire Asterisk
Oil prices came down. The energy market disruption didn't. A second update to our AI infrastructure cost thesis.
The Signal
The Bond Market's Forced Reckoning
For six weeks, bond markets ran two contradictory bets. The ceasefire collapsed one of them. What's left is a pure tariff inflation signal the market now has to price honestly.
The Signal
After the Ceasefire: What the Oil Price Collapse Means for AI Infrastructure
Oil fell from $126 to $92. That reverses part of what we said was breaking. Here is what precisely changed — and what didn't.
The Signal
The Tariff Stack: How Metals, Pharma, and Section 232 Restructuring Are Compounding the Cost Burden
Three tariff regimes are now running simultaneously. The Section 232 restructuring's mechanism shift — from metal-content to full-customs-value — is the underreported one, and its cost implications for AI infrastructure are direct.
The Signal
The Net Negative: Goldman Sachs Puts a Number on AI Labor Market Displacement
Goldman Sachs ran forty years of longitudinal data and found AI is cutting 16,000 net payrolls per month — and the scarring lasts a decade. The unemployment rate doesn't show it.
The Signal
The $126 Barrel Problem
The AI capex boom was modeled on cheap energy and stable supply chains. Neither assumption is still operative. A stress test in three pressure points.
The Signal
The Appeal: What Happens If the Pentagon Wins
The DOJ is asking the Ninth Circuit to restore the Pentagon's power to designate any AI company a supply chain risk for declining military use cases. April 30 deadline. The economics of that outcome haven't been written.
The Signal
The Cost of Fake Trust
Delve didn't just fake compliance reports. It demonstrated that when AI drops the cost of manufacturing trust signals to near zero, the Akerlof mechanism that makes trust markets function breaks down.
Economics
Liberation Day, Year One: What the Tariffs Actually Built
One year after Liberation Day: 89,000 fewer manufacturing jobs, a permanently smaller economy, and $166 billion in wrongly-collected tariffs being refunded.
The Signal
The +178K Nobody Should Take at Face Value
The March jobs report beat consensus by three times. The strike reversal in healthcare accounts for 76,000 of those jobs. Strip it out and the organic print is 102,000 — respectable but not a blowout. The story is in the revisions.
The Signal
The Plans Are Already Made
A Federal Reserve survey of 750 corporate executives finds AI-driven workforce reductions are already planned. The data hasn't caught up yet. That's not reassurance — it's a description of how displacement works.
The Signal
Who Writes the Rules: The White House AI Framework and What It Leaves Out
The Trump administration's AI legislative framework preempts state regulation while offering workers an aspiration. Five of six objectives serve industry. The sixth encourages Congress.