What we’re reading (2/14)
“The Economy May Have Stuck The Soft Landing. Nobody Wants To Jinx It.” (Wall Street Journal). “The vital signs of the American economy are pointing in the same, favorable direction more convincingly than at any point since before the pandemic. Inflation is falling. The labor market is holding. Growth has been solid. It is a snapshot, not a verdict—but it is the closest the economy has come to achieving a soft landing, a moderation in inflation without recession. Just four years ago, many economists said that was impossible. This past April, as the economy closed in on a soft landing, steep tariffs had forecasters bracing for a new surge in inflation.”
“AI And The Real Bottlenecks To Growth” (Agglomerations). “‘A country of geniuses. That is Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s vision of the world after the arrival of truly powerful artificial intelligence. He foresees millions of independent, highly intelligent agents capable of being sent off to do projects, like an army of smart employees. Sounds like science fiction, and yet it becomes more plausible by the day. What does economics research have to say about such a world, one where non-human scientists flood the economy with new ideas? The typical answer, according to the economic models, is that more researchers leads to more growth. One complication with this story is that we have already added a ton of researchers over the last few decades, during which productivity growth has been historically weak.”
“The Safe Assets That Weren’t.” (Hanno Lustig). “After WWII, the US took over the baton from the UK as the world’s purveyor of safe assets. The dominance of the dollar was more or less codified in the Bretton-Woods agreement of 1944. John Maynard Keynes, who was leading the negotiations for the British at Bretton-Woods, was lobbying for a multi-polar system without a special role for any single currency, but ultimately the US delegation’s proposal carried the day.1 Only the dollar was to be convertible in gold. Other countries were required to hold their foreign currency reserves in dollars. Back in 1960, Robert Triffin, a Belgian born Yale economist, had predicted that this arrangement would be short-lived. To keep the world supplied with enough dollars, the US would have to keep running balance of payment deficits, ultimately leading investors to question the gold backing of all those dollars being recycled abroad. He was proven right within a decade. This time around, the same questions are being asked about the backing of US Treasurys.”
“Farmers Are Aging. Their Kids Don’t Want To Be In The Family Business.” (Wall Street Journal). “The number of farmers in America has been shrinking for years, but rising costs and weak commodity prices are pushing more families out at a faster rate. In 2025, 315 farms filed for bankruptcy, up 46% from 2024, U.S. court data shows. Those left are aging; there are more farmers 75 and older than under the age of 35, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They are facing tough choices and tougher prospects.”
“America’s Annoyance Economy Is Growing” (The Atlantic). “[C]onsumers have never had an easier time spending their money. You can choose from among millions of films on your iPhone in an instant, buy a plane ticket to Bali in minutes, get a restaurant meal delivered in an hour, and have a full house’s worth of furniture placed in your home in a few days. Yet businesses have also embedded countless frictions into the consumer experience. You might expect such hassles in health care, but they’re everywhere. We live in a world of ‘total bureaucracy,’ as the anthropologist David Graeber put it.”
