ECONOMICS
Markets, policy and the forces that move capital.
What is the economics coverage about?
Economics is the operating system underneath everything else. Policy decisions made in Washington, Frankfurt, or Beijing ripple into supply chains, hiring plans, and the cost of capital for every startup.
Our economics coverage is built around causality — not just what happened, but why it happened and what it forces next.
Who reads economics analysis here?
The audience we write for is making decisions. Inflation dynamics matter because they're negotiating contracts. Capital flows matter because they're allocating portfolios.
Market analysis here goes deeper than consensus. We cover financial markets with a structural bias — tracking where pressure builds before it releases.
What sources does this analysis draw from?
Economic analysis here means reading primary sources — central bank transcripts, BIS research, IMF working papers — and translating them into insight operators and founders can use.
If you believe economic literacy is a competitive advantage — and it is — The Best Blog Ever is built for you.
Latest Analysis
China Took Over Open-Source AI
61% of tokens on OpenRouter now route to Chinese models. Four of the top five open-weight models are Chinese. The takeover is measurable — and it runs on price.
Key Takeaways
- The takeover is measurable: ~61% of token consumption on OpenRouter, four of the five most-used open-weight models Chinese.
- It runs on price — 5–30x cheaper than Western equivalents, a structural cost gap driven by efficiency and scale.
- But "took over open" does not mean "took over the frontier" — best open Chinese models trail top proprietary US models by ~6–9 points.
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