The Watch Window
26 signals · quarterly cadence with monthly micro-updates · last update 2026-05-15
Cards highlighted with an orange left-border carry a current reading past at least one defined threshold. Click any card for the threshold values and the cadence that updates them. Signals without an orange border are inside their historical range or have no threshold defined for the current direction of travel.
The Watch Window is the live counterpart to the manuscript. Each signal here corresponds to an arithmetic claim made in the long-form work; each is updated manually, on a cadence that forces me to look at the underlying number before publishing it. Thresholds are numeric. Readings are descriptive. The dashboard refuses to predict timing or path — that is not what these signals are for.
A signal crossing a watch threshold is not a forecast that something will happen by a date. It is a statement that one of the load-bearing assumptions in the diagnosis has moved into a range that no longer cancels out the others. The discipline is to record that movement honestly when it occurs, and to resist the temptation to attach a story to it before the next quarter's data is in.
Diagnosis
US Federal Debt / GDP
On track to pass the postwar peak this year and to keep climbing through the 2030s under any CBO baseline.
Net interest vs national defence spending
Crossover happened in FY2024 and the gap has widened in every fiscal year since. One dollar in five of every tax dollar collected services debt; the fifty-year average is twelve cents.
Shiller CAPE ratio (S&P 500)
Second-highest reading in 144 years of data. December 1999 was the only higher observation. Current level is being held at 4–5% on the long bond, not zero.
US market cap / GDP (Buffett indicator)
Highest reading in the postwar series, by a wide margin. Buffett once called this 'probably the best single measure of where valuations stand at any given moment.'
Mag 7 share of S&P 500 market cap
Concentration alone is not a thesis; concentration combined with the AI capex-to-revenue gap is.
Bottom 50% household wealth share
The floor the sovereign math rests on. The five-year equity bull run was almost entirely a wealth event for the top quintile.
US renter households housing-cost-burdened
A record share. The 2020–2024 inflation has not been reversed in rent — it is the new baseline household cost structure, and the wage curve has not closed the gap.
Social Security worker-to-beneficiary ratio
The denominator that makes the entitlement math work or not. Trustees project the descent to 2.3 by 2040 — at which point the OASI cut becomes statutory rather than political.
US total fertility rate
Below replacement, structurally. The migration assumption in the entitlement math now does all the demographic work — the fertility series alone implies a shrinking native-born labour force.
Gold price (USD / oz)
Not a hedge thesis — a fiscal-credibility signal. The manuscript frames gold as the market's reading of how much trust remains in the reserve-currency arithmetic. The trend, not the spot price, is what matters.
OASI trust fund depletion year
Statutory cut of 23–28% triggers on depletion absent legislative action. The default position is the cut; the political system decides who absorbs it.
World Beyond
USD share of global FX reserves
Slow-moving signal. The dollar's reserve status is the largest non-fiscal lever the US Treasury has. Reserve diversification is a path, not an event.
EM hard-currency credit spreads (EMBI)
Where dollar-funding stress shows up first. The South African vantage matters: SA is the clinical-extreme test bed for what dollar-tight cycles do to EM credit.
USD share of global trade invoicing
The deeper measure of dollar dominance than reserve share. Invoicing moves slowly because the network effect is real; when it does move, it does not snap back.
SA debt service / consolidated revenue
The clinical-extreme vantage. SA is what the US fiscal arithmetic looks like decades earlier on the curve — the question is whether the US trajectory bends or simply repeats the EM playbook.
Political Amplifier
Trust in the federal government
The number that gates which policy responses are politically available. Below 20%, the orderly-exit options narrow sharply.
V-Dem US liberal democracy index
Tracks the slope of institutional drift rather than any one event. The number to read against the trust-in-government series.
Share accepting political violence as justified
Not predictive of any specific event. A measure of the political envelope inside which institutional responses to the diagnosis must operate.
Mechanism
US credit card revolving APR
The structural transfer from the bottom half of the wealth distribution to the financial sector, in one number. The marginal household has no buffer — this is the cost of that fact.
Top 10% share of US consumer spending
Aggregate retail-sales resilience can mask median-household stress because the median household is no longer the marginal driver of aggregate consumption. The mechanism by which the K-shape hides.
Treasury auction bid-to-cover (10y / 30y)
Where fiscal stress shows up at market speed. Watch the trend, not the individual print — single auctions are noisy.
Subprime auto 60+ day delinquency
The household-balance-sheet signal that surfaces first because the loans are short-tenor and the marginal borrower has no buffer.
AI infrastructure capex-to-revenue gap
The single most concentrated bet in the postwar period. Hyperscaler FCF turn is the threshold where the bet has to start paying or the capex curve breaks.
FINRA margin debt
Late-cycle leverage signal. The size of the margin-call pool that becomes a mechanical seller when the index draws down.
Counterweight
Nonfarm business labour productivity (TTM)
The single statistic that, if it actually shows up in the aggregate data on a multi-year basis, materially eases the diagnosis. The honest counterweight: the bull case requires this number to deliver.
Real wage growth — bottom quintile
The household-side counterweight. If this number runs durably positive in real terms, the K-shape narrows and the fragility floor lifts. Watch the trend, not a single print.