Apropos of nothing except current (financial system) events (Fall teaching), some pictures to elicit thoughts.
- Debt rising fast even at full employment
- Stock market near peak?
- Fed funds rate above Taylor rule implied levels.
- Fed credibility lower under Trump 2.0.
- Stablecoins after GENIUS.
- And (not on the syllabus), dollar reserve currency domination eroded (see Eichengreen in NYT yesterday).
Figure 1: Federal debt held by public to GDP ratio (blue, left scale), CBO February projection (+, let scale), real ten year interest rates (TIPS), % (red, right scale).
Figure 2: CPI deflated S&P500 (blue, left log scale), CAPE, % (red, right scale). Source: Shiller.
Figure 3: S&P500 capitalization (blue bar), share accounted for by Magnificent 7 (red, right scale). Source: MacroMicro.
Figure 4: Various Taylor rule implied target Fed funds vs. actual (black). Source: Atlanta Fed.
Figure 5: Bordo-Siklos central bank credibility measure for Fed, 5 year (blue). Calculated as |i-i*| for -1 < i-i* < +1, and (i-i*)2 otherwise. Higher means less credibility.
Figure 6: Stablecoins. Source: Liang and Nieman, “Stablecoins after GENIUS” (2026).
