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Economist; former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.

• I realize I did not give the link to the full paper on ratings, debt and deficits. Here it is:

  imf.org

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Author and clean-energy analyst who writes on solar cost curves.

• Spoiler: It's not a psyop. You can disagree with the view that AI is a meaningful x-risk (I do!). And it's worth understanding that people who are worried about this have often been worried about it for decades, long before there was money in it. Coordinating messages != psyop.
  Quoting@DavidSKruegerI feel blessed to have gotten so much new engagement from accounts that this AI risk is a psyop. I have been deeply involved in both technical AI research and AI risk reduction efforts for over a decade, so personally I'm confident it's not a psyop. But I can understand why people who lack this kin…

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Economist; former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.

• Ratings largely determine spreads. Yet, their construction remains largely a black box. Our paper assesses the relative importance of debt, deficits and country specific effects in the determination of these ratings. The evidence is at odds with a simple model of default: more importance of debt, less importance of forecast deficits, limited role of r-g, surprisingly large role of country effects. We are agnostic. The model may be too simple in some fundamental ways. Or the rating agencies may be using incorrect weights. Or a mix of the two... We hope the paper triggers a useful discussion.
  Quoting@int_mon_econSuper interesting! "Ratings, Debt, and Deficits: An Exploration" by Olivier J Blanchard, Daniel Leigh, and Prachi Mishra. "We look at the effects of debt and primary fiscal balances on sovereign credit ratings through the lens of a simple model. We find that the ratings differ from the implications…

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Writes Where's Your Ed At and hosts Better Offline; runs a tech PR firm, and argues at length that the AI business does not add up.

• Premium: The Hater's Guide To AI Debt (Part 1)

  The year is 2026, and you are a hyperscaler CEO. You zip up your Patagonia vest, type UPDATE ME ON CALENDOR TOODAY into ChatGPT, and see that you have a meeting with your CFO. They tell you that while they love all thos…

  OpenAIRelated

Founded Bridgewater Associates in 1975 and led it until stepping back from control in 2022. Author of Principles, The Changing World Order and How Countries Go Broke; publishes economic analysis at economicprinciples.org.

• As I’ve explained here before, at this stage in my life, my main goal is to pass along the principles and templates I've learned with the hope that they can help others as much as they've helped me. One thing that has been incredibly valuable to me is learning that just because something hasn’t happened before in my lifetime doesn’t mean it won’t happen. So I needed to look not only at what the markets have been doing lately but to also study big events—like debt crises, internal political conflicts, and international wars—throughout history. For example, it was by studying the Great Depressi…

  wmi.edu.sg

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Economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury. Author of Slouching Towards Utopia and writer of the Grasping Reality newsletter.

• Spreads on financing the datacenter buildout are still small enough not to seriously discourage it, but large enough to reveal that the financiers are getting nervous about a non-zero chance of a bigdeal default on their loans: **DataCenter Risk Is the Real Thing: CHART OF THE DAY** For the second day in a row, looking at debt & datacenters & Interest-rate spreads; the widening in hyperscaler datacenter build-out financing spreads is not driven by dealer hedging of new issuance… 1/

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Founded Bridgewater Associates in 1975 and led it until stepping back from control in 2022. Author of Principles, The Changing World Order and How Countries Go Broke; publishes economic analysis at economicprinciples.org.

• The most meaningful relationships are achieved when you and others can speak openly to each other about everything that's important, learn together, and understand the need to hold each other accountable to be as excellent as you can be. When you have such relationships with those you work with, you pull each other through challenging times; at the same time, sharing challenging work draws you closer and strengthens your relationships. This self-reinforcing cycle creates the success that allows you to pursue more and more ambitious goals. #principleoftheday

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Economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury. Author of Slouching Towards Utopia and writer of the Grasping Reality newsletter.

• MastodonEquity investors sell the dream; bond investors price the funeral. Here’s what they’re charging those undertaking the now debt-financed DataCenter Rush: **Debt & DataCenters: CHART OF THE DAY** FaceBook bankrupt in one scenario in fifteen in five years? SpaceX & Oracle one in six? That appears to be what those willing to lend to FaceBook right now are thinking... https://braddelong.substack.com/p/hyperscaler-debt-default-risk > 2026-09-15

  data centersRelated

• NewsletterDebt & DataCenters: CHART OF THE DAY

  FaceBook bankrupt in one scenario in fifteen in five years? SpaceX & Oracle one in six? That appears to be what those willing to lend to FaceBook right now are thinking...

  data centersRelated

Writer of the 25iq blog, where he distils "a dozen things I've learned" from investors, founders and thinkers. Author of Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor and A Dozen Lessons for Entrepreneurs.

• Zero probability China cedes AI supremacy to a few US businesses. "The boundary between AI safety and AI competition is becoming increasingly blurred,” added Sun, who has discussed AI with US counterparts. “If every safety question becomes interpreted through the lens of strategic competition, meaningful dialogue will be difficult.”

  bloomberg.com

  AI alignmentChinaRelated

Economist; former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.

• i was going to write something, but Quentin beat me to it... Let me put it another way, so that Chairman Coquerel @ericcoquerel understands and corrects his statement. When a state issues nominal bonds (bonds that pay in euros), the real value of interest payments varies with inflation, creating risk for investors. So they require a higher interest rate to compensate for the risk. In issuing inflation protected bonds, the state eliminates the risk and thus is able to get a lower rate. This decreases the burden of the debt. This is good. Always happy to help the Chair of the Finance Committee…
  Quoting@QuentinVandewe2Est-ce que LFI organise un concours Lépine pour la théorie du complot la plus idiote sur la dette ? Après la Banque de France qui revendrait la dette en secret, Mélenchon découvre que l'État « vient de proposer de nouveau des titres indexés sur le capital et des intérêts compensant l'inflation ». U…

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Co-founder and chief investment officer of Cambria Investment Management. He has written several books on quantitative asset allocation, blogs at Meb Faber Research and hosts The Meb Faber Show.

• 𝗕𝗼𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝗡𝗮𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗲𝗼𝗻, 𝘁𝗼𝗽𝗽𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝗮 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗮𝗱𝗲 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝗺𝗽 𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸. 𝗕𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝘁. My guest today is Robin Wigglesworth (@RobinWigg), editor of @FTAlphaville and author of A Fabulous Debt, a thousand-year history of the market that sets the price of everything else. We get into: • An Austrian 100 year bond that lost 80%, while a defaulting Argentina paid off better • Why T-bills feel safe but can lose you 50%+ in real terms after inflation • Is private credit the next systemic blowup? • Why the $12 trillion repo mar…

  inflationRelated

Writer of Lenny's Newsletter and host of Lenny's Podcast, covering product, growth and career in tech. Previously a product lead at Airbnb. Also an angel investor and advisor.

• Still processing from yesterday's event (one of the most meaningful days of my life)— more to come—but a few quick things for now: 1. Thank you to everyone who came. You are what made it special. 2. There's so much need for IRL community. I've rarely felt this kind of pull for anything I've done. Wow. 3. All of the talks will be posted to my YT channel in the coming weeks. Get excited. 4. An unbelievable thank-you to the @Stripe team for helping me put this event on. It takes something special to create an event with 1,000+ PMs that has such great vibes. If you think they're great at payments…

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Director of institutional asset management at Ritholtz Wealth Management. Writes the A Wealth of Common Sense blog and co-hosts the Animal Spirits podcast with Michael Batnick.

• I know everyone hates bonds right now b/c inflation, govt debt, etc But if you own a bond index fund that tracks the Agg you're getting 5.2% avg yield to maturity right now Investors would have killed for yields this high at any point in the past 15 years or so

  inflationRelated

Founded Bridgewater Associates in 1975 and led it until stepping back from control in 2022. Author of Principles, The Changing World Order and How Countries Go Broke; publishes economic analysis at economicprinciples.org.

• When there were just a few of us, we had meaningful relationships because we knew and liked each other. When we grew to between fifty and a hundred people, we had a community; when we grew beyond that, the sense of community began to slip because we didn't all know each other in the same way. That's when I realized that having groups (departments) of around a hundred (give or take about fifty) that are bound collectively by our common mission was the best way to scale the meaningful relationship. While bigger companies tend to be more impersonal, that is just another challenge that has to be…

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Founded Bridgewater Associates in 1975 and led it until stepping back from control in 2022. Author of Principles, The Changing World Order and How Countries Go Broke; publishes economic analysis at economicprinciples.org.

• Almost every technology boom creates a bubble, then a bust, whether it’s railroads, the Industrial Revolution, or the late 1920s. Think about the late '20s: electricity, refrigeration, telephones, radios, airplanes, and cars were all emerging at once. Naturally, people wanted to invest in these miracles. The danger is that people fail to distinguish the miracle from the investment. A technology can be truly transformative, but if the stocks are priced too high or bought on debt, you get a crash. That is the mechanics behind how bubbles form and burst. New technology will be great, there is no…

  energyRelated

Co-founder, chairman and chief investment officer of Ritholtz Wealth Management. Hosts the Masters in Business podcast for Bloomberg and wrote How NOT to Invest.

• Corporate vs Treasury Debt Duration

  dlvr.it

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Economist; former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.

• A very good and clear article on debt cancellation, and why the arguments of people like Nicolas Dufrene, Jezabel Cuppey-Soubeyran do not hold water. https://t.co/gm5NuJh56F What makes it particularly interesting is the fact that its author, Henri Steryniak, is very much to the left, a co-founder of "Economistes atteres", a French association of heterodox economists, definitely not a neo-liberal bastion.

  economistsRelated

• Separate and interesting discussion. True, the ECB (BDF) is slowly reducing its holdings of sovereign bonds, including French bonds (this is called QT, quantitative tightening). By selling those bonds, it decreases their price (not very much, but a bit) and thus increases the interest rate paid by the governments of the euro zone. This indeed makes things a bit harder for the government, who now pay more on their debt. Is the ECB doing this to spite governments, or to induce them to adjust? Emphatically not. It is doing this because it wants to reduce reserves (which is what happens when it s…
  Quoting@StefPalomba@ojblanchard1 1/ la BdF fait partie de l’Etat donc 2/ l’histoire ne tient pas sauf à imaginer que Pierre soit le gouv, 3/ si Paul, dont ce n’est pas le rôle, veut contrer la politique de Pierre, il remet les titres sur le marché, le taux d’intérêt grimpe, 4/ congeler a donc du sens pour Pierre

  interest ratesgovernmentRelated

Web designer and writer; founded A List Apart and Happy Cog, co-founded the An Event Apart conference, and wrote Designing With Web Standards.

• It’s the tenth anniversary of Spinal Cord Injury Day—“a decade of collective global effort to raise awareness, strength prevention, and advance meaningful action for people living with spinal cord injury.”

  iscos.org.uk

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Programmer, musician and author of The Passionate Programmer; organised RubyConf and RailsConf and has worked as a CTO.

• x.comThis album comes out this Sunday. It's one of the most meaningful releases of my music career. Something for everyone here I hope. ♥️

  mahakalamusic.bandcamp.com

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• BlueskyThis album comes out this Sunday. It's one of the most meaningful releases of my music career. Something for everyone here I hope. ♥️

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Organizational psychologist and professor at the Wharton School. Author of Give and Take, Originals, Think Again and Hidden Potential, host of the Re:Thinking podcast, and writer of the GRANTED newsletter.

• The activity you enjoy most is not your calling. It's your hobby. Careers aren't built solely on passion—they depend on making a meaningful contribution. Doing what you love is a luxury. Finding a purpose is a necessity.

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Author of Shape Up; formerly head of strategy at Basecamp, where he worked on product design for seventeen years; now runs Felt Presence.

• I've been maintaining a Rails app for ~10 years. It has very specific business logic for on-site multi-day course registrations. DDD style like I learned at 37signals. For 10 years, I configured each course in the Rails console. It was never worth it to build out the configurator UI. This year, I just talked to AI to do it. And the payoff from the carefully written model is really amazing. The AI was completely speaking the language of the domain and even raising meaningful pricing/structural questions about how the packages are set up this year vs previous years. Sharing this example because…

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Co-founder and chief investment officer of Cambria Investment Management. He has written several books on quantitative asset allocation, blogs at Meb Faber Research and hosts The Meb Faber Show.

• ShortAmerica’s Shocking Solution to Massive Debt

  AmericaRelated

German developer; founder and lead developer of Mastodon, the decentralized open-source social network.

• Delicious tree bark.

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Software entrepreneur who bootstrapped and sold FeedbackPanda and now builds Podscan; writes The Bootstrapped Founder.

• This is incredibly good guidance. AI excels at distilling a long rant into meaningful points. It can extract, reduce complexity, increase clarity. It makes salient thoughts and ideas even sharper. It sucks when it just „generates“ because it approximates an average response.
  Quoting@hammer_mtAI writing is only allowed if your input tokens > your output tokens. "Write me an article on X" is slop, "here's an hour of my hard-won experience on X, write it up" is morally defensible and leads to good writing, even if AI wrote the final draft. Divide input tokens (initial idea plus guidance a…

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Founder and CEO of Social Capital, a venture firm; co-host of the All-In podcast and an early Facebook executive. Writes an annual letter and a weekly newsletter on markets and technology.

• Nvidia's Historic Quarter, SaaS Comeback, Bessent vs Druck, America's Debt Crisis, Cancer Vaccine

  SaaSAmericaRelated

Partner at Collaborative Fund and author of The Psychology of Money, Same As Ever and The Art of Spending Money. Writes essays on investor behavior and posts frequently on X.

• The Psychology of Money Podcast: Household debt/GDP has plunged at the same time Government debt/GDP surged. On net, we're about where we were 20 years ago.

  governmentRelated

Economist at the Hoover Institution; wrote The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level and blogs as The Grumpy Economist.

• French Fables

  An interesting brouhaha has broken out in France, lately famous for reinvigorating the idea of wealth taxes: The French government should default on (“annul” “cancel” — the left is great at euphemisms) its debt held by…

  governmentRelated

Writes on effective altruism, energy and the arithmetic behind arguments people repeat — including how much electricity a chatbot query actually uses.

• I'm very skeptical that China has played a meaningful role in the US data center backlash

  The evidence we have is pretty weak

  data centersChinaRelated

Economist; Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT Sloan, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, and co-author of 13 Bankers and Power and Progress.

• Bipartisan Sanctioning Russia Act: would impose meaningful mandatory sanctions + targeted tariffs. An excellent idea whose time has come. Hopefully, Congress will pass and the President will sign soon

  RussiaRelated

Writer and former Substack product manager; publishes essays and interviews on technology, culture and China at jasmi.news.

• data center road trip // day 2-3 - Port Washington has faced intense protests and a mayoral recall over their data center. residents cite environment and aesthetics, but are fine with the power plant in the middle of town - Mount Pleasant officials were relieved to have Microsoft build, filling the $100m+ debt hole left by the failed Foxconn project - the union guys are making bank, getting $100 cash per diems on top of 6-figure salaries, and farmers became decamillionaires selling their land - the huge numbers on data center deals make residents *more* suspicious, not less! I’ve heard less a…
  Quoting@jasminewsunI’m spending the next week driving around Wisconsin and Michigan to get a firsthand view of the data center buildout and backlash am visiting sites, talking to tons of people — tradespeople, activists, planners, residents — then writing up a story lmk what questions I should dig into!

  data centersAmericaRelated

Clinical psychologist and clinical professor of psychiatry at UCSF. His 2010 meta-analysis established psychodynamic therapy as an evidence-based treatment; he has argued ever since that "evidence-based therapy" is used as a marketing term.

• Podcast: What Makes Psychotherapy Meaningful?

  A conversation about psychiatry, psychotherapy, therapy-speak, and what gets lost when mental health treatment becomes a procedure.

  PsychotherapyRelated

Robert Gray Dodge Professor of Network Science at Northeastern University; discovered scale-free networks and, with Reka Albert, proposed the Barabasi-Albert model.

• Honored to receive the Euler Award, the @netscisociety's highest recognition. It was particularly meaningful to receive at the 20th anniversary meeting of the @netscisociety surrounded by the students, postdocs, collaborators who made this possible. Let us continue the journey!

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Lawyer and everyday-carry gear reviewer who publishes scored knife, flashlight and multitool reviews at Everyday Commentary.

• The End of an Era and Why Fixed Blade Manufacturing is Hard

  On March 20, 2026 Bark River closed its doors. Here is my article from Gear Junkie covering their closure. It was an ignominious end to the brand. Here is a Reddit post with the Facebook post from Mike Stewart detailing…

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Founder of the Silicon Valley Product Group; wrote Inspired, Empowered and Transformed on how product organisations work.

• Build To Learn FAQ

  In our last article, we argued that especially in the age of AI, we are all builders, but that there is a very meaningful difference between building to learn (known as product discovery) versus building to earn (known…

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Cyborg anthropologist and UX designer; author of Calm Technology and co-founder of the geolocation startup Geoloqi.

• It was a great honor to speak at @AXIS_Tokyo and provide a workshop on #CalmTech. Thank you to everyone for a meaningful experience.
  Quoting@nobi3月4日に AXIS Gallery @AXIS_Tokyo で行われた Amber Case @caseorganic を招いての #CalmTech イベントレポートが @mui_labo のページに掲載されていました： https://t.co/tLO4IkEkVg 3月末には掲載されていたようですが今頃気がつきました💦

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Writes Nintil, long researched essays on metascience, biology, economics and whatever he has decided to read the literature on.

• Links (93)

  Nasa's orion is flaming garbage Looks like the AI 2027 report scenario isn't happening and money is running out, fundraising is no longer enough, and large debt raises are now happening. Derek Thompson and Tim Lee on AI…

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Software engineer writing about maintenance, open source and the industrial reality of software — the author of "I am not a supplier".

• How FOSS Won and Why It Matters

  I regularly comment on the Internet on my views on most schemes proposed to fix FOSS problems. They are mostly negative. I think that most of these schemes cannot achieve any meaningful impact. It seems that most of the…

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Organizational psychologist and professor at the Wharton School. Author of Give and Take, Originals, Think Again and Hidden Potential, host of the Re:Thinking podcast, and writer of the GRANTED newsletter.

• What AI Companions Are Missing

  Meaningful relationships are about giving, not only receiving.

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Member of technical staff at Anthropic. He has led ML/AI teams at Amazon, Alibaba and Lazada, and writes about LLMs, recommender systems and engineering at eugeneyan.com.

• The best leaders I’ve worked with operate with perma-urgency. They act like early founders, mindful of existential threats. And they can balance speed, sustainability, and repay tech debt. Ultimately, customers love it and teams thrive when we ship fast to deliver delight.

  startupsRelated

Engineering leader and writer on web operations and resilience engineering; formerly SVP of Technical Operations at Etsy and co-author of Web Operations.

• Meaningful learning from incidents requires expertise that most organizations do not have — but these skills can be learned! We're getting a head start on 2025 with a workshop series on Incident Analysis.

  adaptivecapacitylabs.com

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Engineering leader and writer on web operations and resilience engineering; formerly SVP of Technical Operations at Etsy and co-author of Web Operations.

• (from the archives) What "dark debt" is about

  medium.com

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