Cycles of Change

Engineering practical systems and exploring the physical world.

When grocery receipts climb at suburban checkout counters, shoppers naturally assume that farmers are pocketing handsome profits. A dozen eggs or a loaf of sourdough bread costs significantly more than it did four years ago. Yet out on county roads across Iowa and Kansas, family growers sit at [...]
The United States owes more than 36 trillion dollars. This debt grows by about one trillion dollars every hundred days. The government pays over 900 billion dollars each year just on interest. That is more than the country spends on defense. This affects every family. But most people do not know [...]
Modern market economies operate along recurrent waves of debt boom followed by sharp bust. During the boom phase, central banks lower interest rates and commercial banks extend easy loans to eager borrowers. Businesses expand operations, consumers finance real estate purchases, and stock prices [...]
In the architecture of global finance, the United States Treasury market serves as the bedrock of risk-free collateral. It is the foundation upon which nearly all other asset classes are priced. However, this purported stability relies on a singular, fragile assumption: that the issuer possesses [...]