Who Pays for the Next Gigawatt?
A data center can pay for its connection and still affect everyone else's power bill. Ohio's tariff and PJM's proposals address different parts of that problem.
Latest
The journal, in publication order. Substantive revisions retain their original publication date and carry a separate update note.
Bills Are a Fifth of the Debt, and the Costliest Fifth
Treasury has kept its bill share above the advisory committee's 15 to 20 percent range for three years. Bills now carry a higher average rate than notes or bonds, and the note stack is still repricing upward.
Treasury Is Offered Far More Than It Buys Back
Since May 2024, dealers have offered $1.7 trillion of securities into Treasury's liquidity-support buybacks. Treasury has accepted $223 billion. Doubling the caps changed the ceiling, not the behaviour.
The Vendor Is Now the Underwriter
Nvidia's quarter was reported as a supply story. The more consequential work was on the other side of the transaction — making someone else willing to lend against the chips.
The Fed Went Quiet. The Treasury Did Not.
Chair Warsh used Jackson Hole to stop narrating the path of policy. The same week, Treasury was already managing the long end by buying it.
Insurance Is Becoming Housing Policy
Coverage used to be a cost of owning a home. In riskier places, it is becoming the mechanism that decides what can be built, bought, and financed.
The Repricing Nobody Scheduled
Bond yields can move while the policy rate stands still. Separating the observed move from its possible causes changes the balance-sheet lesson.
The Compute Bill Comes Due
Useful-life assumptions change reported infrastructure costs. They need to be tested alongside utilization, cash spending and the financing behind demand.
Antitrust Grows Up
Platform cases test access, exclusion and market structure alongside price effects. The hardest question may be what remedy courts will accept.
What the Credit Market Knows First
Credit spreads expose refinancing and liquidity pressure. Reading them well means separating market prices, ratings decisions and the mandates that can force a sale.
Everyone Is Building the Same Data Center
The hyperscalers compete fiercely on everything except the thing that now constrains them all: where to find the next gigawatt.
Who Owns the Training Set?
The most valuable input to modern AI was assembled before anyone agreed on who owned it. The bill for that omission is now being litigated.
The Return of the Boring Balance Sheet
Cash, buybacks and fewer projects can reflect discipline or underinvestment. A framework for telling them apart, without assuming the whole market has chosen restraint.
The Model Is Not the Moat
Falling inference prices and narrower benchmark gaps put model-level pricing power under pressure. Distribution, data and workflow integration deserve a separate test.
Industrial Policy Without the Slogans
Subsidy programs are easy to announce and hard to evaluate. Enough time has now passed to ask the uncomfortable question: did they work?
Liquidity Is a Story We Tell Ourselves
Liquidity feels like a property of markets. It is closer to a collective agreement — and agreements can be revoked without notice.
Silicon's Slow Fracture
The chip supply chain is not decoupling so much as duplicating — at enormous cost, and with no guarantee the copies will ever run at scale.
The Privacy Rules Are Finally Boring
Shared privacy controls can make compliance more operational. A comparison of California and Colorado shows both the reusable work and the limits of convergence.