The macroeconomy
Five nodes on the aggregate: the cycle, employment, inflation, and the rate-setting machinery.
Why this track existsThe macroeconomy is what you experience as 'the economy.' Track C lets you read it instead of having opinions about it.
The 5-node arc
§ Nodes · in order- C1★
GDP, properly
GDP measures market activity, sliced three ways — production, expenditure, income — that have to come out equal. It is the agreed-upon scoreboard, not a measure of welfare. Once you see the lenses, every macro debate becomes legible.
● ready5 min - C2★
The business cycle
Booms end because they exhaust their own preconditions — too much credit, too tight a labor market, too elevated asset prices. The recession that follows is the system reverting to a sustainable state, painfully.
● ready13 min - C3
Unemployment, three ways
Frictional, structural, cyclical. Only the third one responds to demand stimulus. Mistaking one for another is how policy makes recessions worse.
● ready6 min - C4
Inflation regimes
Demand-pull, cost-push, expectations-driven, fiscal-dominant. Same headline number, four different causes, four different cures. Knowing which one you're in is the whole game.
● ready10 min - C5
Rates as the price of time
A central bank changes one number — the policy rate. Treasuries, mortgages, credit, equities, the dollar, jobs, prices all respond — but at different speeds. The 'long and variable lags' are the whole story.
● ready10 min