Economics Working Notes

The Falsifier Watch

The exits we publish in advance, and the revisions we make when the evidence moves. A live scoreboard of the thesis's falsifiers plus a dated revision ledger — credibility as an instrument.

Research · Accountability

The Falsifier Watch

The mirror ledger: Receipts — what we said, when, what happened →

A research desk is only as good as the things it would let prove it wrong. So we publish the exits in advance — the conditions that would break each call — and we track them live. Below the watch, a dated ledger of every revision we've made when the evidence moved. Credibility as an instrument, not a slogan.

The watch · what would change our mind

The exits, published in advance

Falsifier
Current reading
Status
Cluster utilization climbs above 70% on disclosed figuresweakens fragility · The Race · Stranded
~40–60% (industry estimates) — the zone of maximum ambiguity
Watching
AI-attributable TFP turns up in the official seriesweakens fragility · The Lag Index
~+0.07pp/yr (Kansas City Fed / BLS) — not yet in the aggregates
Not triggered
AI revenue growth overtakes capex growth for several quartersweakens fragility · Stranded · Capex Watch
Capex still materially outpacing AI-cloud revenue
Not triggered
Training silicon repurposes cleanly for inference at scale, extending real asset lifeweakens fragility · Stranded
Asserted by hyperscalers; no clean disclosed evidence yet
Watching
A hyperscaler shortens useful life citing AI obsolescenceconfirms fragility · Capex Watch
Amazon cut servers 6→5yr (Jan 2025) — the canary; +$1.4B run-rate depreciation
Triggered
Hyperscaler free cash flow turns negative and AI debt refinances at higher ratesconfirms fragility · The Race
Amazon FCF expected negative in 2026; $400B+ AI debt issuance forecast
Watching
Average AI usage deepens well past ~1.5 hrs/week per knowledge workerweakens fragility · The Lag Index
~1.5 hrs/week (executive survey) — logins, not workflow redesign
Not triggered

When a reading crosses its threshold, the call moves with it — and the change is logged below. Sources are on each linked instrument.

The ledger · revise in public

What we've changed, and why

2026-07-02

Recycling ratio revised 26× → 15.5× — a missed Amazon–OpenAI equity edge, added

A line-item re-verification against EDGAR filing text found our edge ledger missing Amazon's Q1 2026 $15.0B funded OpenAI Series C investment and $35.0B commitment letter (accession 0001018724-26-000014). Both were added; the funded-cash denominator widened ~$21B → ~$35B and the headline ratio compressed to 15.5× (~13× present-valued). Why: the ratio must carry every filed edge, including the ones that cut our own headline. Note the falsifier distinction: this equity is intra-ring (a top cloud funding the lab committed to it), not the arm's-length capital that would weaken the thesis — the multiple fell while the circularity tightened.

2026-07-02

Microsoft's OpenAI gain relabeled: $5.9B investment gains, not $4.5B

The Q3 FY2026 10-Q (accession 0001193125-26-191507) reports $5.9B of net gains from OpenAI investments for the nine months — primarily the dilution gain from the OpenAI recapitalization. The $4.5B we carried was the same filing's after-tax net-income impact ($0.60 diluted EPS), mislabeled as the markup. Mark-to-model total is now $18.2B. Why: pre-tax investment gains and their after-tax income effect are different lines; the ledger should quote the one it names.

2026-07-02

Amazon's $920M one-time charge re-attributed to the FY2024 10-K

The ~$920M accelerated-depreciation charge (Q4 2024 early retirements) is verbatim in the FY2024 10-K filed 2025-02-07; we had cited it to the FY2025 10-K. The ~$1.4B actual-2025 depreciation step-up remains correctly cited to the FY2025 10-K. Why: filing-of-record accuracy — the quote must point at the document that contains it.

2026-06-26

Divergence gauge relabeled as a short-series, directional read

Flagged the +4.06 divergence as a four-quarter (n=4) reading — directional, not a long-run signal — on Capex Watch, the Brief, and the homepage. Why: a four-point series can't support two-decimal confidence; the precision implied more than the data holds.

2026-06-26

Amazon depreciation figure reconciled and sourced

Unified to a $1.4B run-rate depreciation step-up (6→5yr policy) plus a separate $920M one-time write-off, cited to Note 1 of the FY2025 10-K, across Capex Watch and the Brief. Why: the two pages had carried non-reconciling figures.

2026-06-26

Reproducibility wording corrected, and the tables published

The indicator pipeline is computed in Python, not "live through DuckDB"; we corrected the wording and published the underlying tables at /data with their accession numbers. Why: the original phrasing overstated the mechanism; the fix is to show the data.

2026-06-26

"Both clocks" claim softened to the defensible version

From "no one else is timing both clocks" to "others time one clock or the other; we hold both on a single scoreboard — with explicit falsifiers, revised in public." Why: the absolute claim contradicted our own sourcing.

This ledger is append-only. Each entry is a place we were less right than we wanted to be, fixed in the open. More on how we work

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