Start with the claim.
Follow it to the source.

Plain-language field guides for understanding price measures, federal debt, and the official releases behind economic headlines.

Guides

prices

Understand why two official inflation measures can move differently without one of them being wrong.

debt

Distinguish a period’s budget gap from the accumulated federal borrowing that remains outstanding.

debt

Compare gross federal debt with debt held by the public, then work through how the choice changes a debt-to-GDP ratio.

data

See how agencies turn sampled prices and spending weights into a price index, then calculate inflation for a clearly defined period.

data

A repeatable workflow for moving from a headline or chart back to the agency release, exact table, definition, and data vintage.

data

A field guide to monthly, twelve-month, adjusted, unadjusted, headline, and component figures in the same release.

data

Understand the price of borrowing, the return to lending, how rates are quoted, and why the Federal Reserve does not set every rate.

prices

Understand how demand, productive capacity, costs, expectations, and policy can interact without reducing every inflation episode to one slogan.

prices

Distinguish a broad, ongoing fall in the price level from cheaper individual products, slower inflation, and a one-month decline.

prices

Learn what inflation means, how a price level differs from an inflation rate, and what a broad average can and cannot say about your costs.

debt

Learn what federal debt records, why Treasury borrows, who holds the securities, and which comparisons make the total meaningful.

prices

Separate the speed of price change from the price level so a slowing inflation rate does not sound like a promise that prices went back down.