Friday

(Thanks to Professor Chuck for passing on this article which inspired this morning’s note)

Inflation is up.  Since the beginning of this century, price appreciations have been relatively modest.  That isn’t to say America hasn’t experienced inflation, we have.  But under the watch of Federal Reserve Chairs Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen, and most of Jerome Powell’s first term, price gains were measured.  In fact, some argue that the F

Econometrics is a study of economic systems using statistical methods. Bored yet?  It uses mathematical models to describe the behavior of an economy.  Most of the time a system behaves in some sort of trending pattern.  Every once in a while, however, there is sufficient change in the pattern which gets described as a structural break.

Pendulums are simple mechanical objects.  They are made of just three parts: a pivot, a rod, and a bob at the end of the rod.

Holes can crop up anywhere.  There’s always one on a perfectly quaffed putting green.  Although I’ve never see it, there is supposed to be a big one in the middle of the Milky Way Galaxy.  Analysts on Saturday and Sunday afternoons might comment on one which opens up when a blocking scheme is particularly effective during football season.  And every once in a whi

Petri dish metaphors are totally appropriate for an economics-oriented note during a global pandemic.  Julius Richard Petri invented the eponymously named Petri dish.  This simple tool is used along with a growth medium to culture cells of things like mosses, yeasts, bacteria, and fungi.

Scientific laws are both derived and sustained by generations of repeated observations of natural phenomena.  Physical sciences are founded on the unveiling of these laws.  In other words, something like chemistry or geology wasn’t invented but discovered.  That doesn’t mean scientists don’t postulate about yet-to-be discovered phenomena, but until an idea is em

Here we are at the beginning of the Fourth of July Holiday weekend in America.  With a long weekend, many will visit friends and family.  With travel volumes expected to be elevated, one’s odds of finding themselves in traffic is high.  You know that feeling; you are motoring down the highway, just slightly above the posted speed limit, and then the brake lights light up.&n