فريق CEFA
Jag DeSaint
Executive Director, The Cefa Brief, CEFA, CEFA
Executive Director of The Cefa Brief.
صورة: The Cefa Brief
نبذة
Jag DeSaint is the Executive Director of The Cefa Brief, the Center for Economics & Foreign Affairs' publication of signed commentary and analysis. He writes on industrial capacity, development finance and the economics of foreign policy.
اللغات: الإنجليزية
كتب Jag DeSaint
The PrincipleThe Silent Architecture of Authority
&Think Publishing · 2026
A ruthless examination of how power operates beneath the visible language of politics, institutions, loyalty, fear, legitimacy, succession, and control. This is not power as advertised. This is power as practiced. Across history, authority has rarely belonged to the loudest figure, the most virtuous figure, or even the figure whose title appears most prominently on the door.
The Monetary StateMonetary Statecraft & the Architecture of Financial Power
&Think Publishing · 2026
Money fails first as a delay. A payment marked complete stays reversible. A clearing window extends. A margin call arrives early. A corridor tightens documentation and turns routine into exception. In that moment, the argument returns, and the hierarchy hidden in calm becomes visible as behavior. The Monetary State begins there. It treats money not as a symbol or a policy dial, but as a governed architecture of claims, ledgers, collateral, and finality that decides what counts as real when time becomes scarce.
The MarketThe Machinery of Capital
&Think Publishing · 2026
Markets are usually explained with stories about fear and greed, innovation and disruption, boom and bust. Those stories are not false, but they are not the machine. The machine is rule, record, proof, and timing: who is allowed to see first, who is allowed to settle first, whose mark becomes official, whose correction becomes law, whose dispute is resolved quickly, and whose uncertainty is priced as a permanent penalty. The market does not only price assets. It prices time, and in stress, time becomes the most valuable product of all.
Empire BornMother of God
&Think Publishing · 2026
In September 1592, the river looks harmless. Gray water, low sky, the kind of day that makes men believe the world is small. Then a battered Portuguese carrack drifts in, forced by weather and pursuit, her hull scarred, her rigging sagging, her decks crowded with exhausted hands who know they are outnumbered. Her name is Madre de Deus. The name hits the tongue like a prayer. The ship answers like a confession.
TechnomicsThe Silent War
&Think Publishing · 2026
Power no longer operates mainly through force, ideology, or visible authority. In the modern world, power works through systems—technological, economic, and financial structures that shape behavior before choices are ever consciously made. These systems do not announce themselves as instruments of control. They present as neutral, efficient, and inevitable, guiding outcomes quietly while leaving the appearance of freedom intact. Power is exercised not by issuing orders, but by shaping the environment in which decisions occur.
The StatesmanThe Art of Dominion
&Think Publishing · 2025
A Codex for the Architects of Power: A ruthless manifesto of dominance, strategy, and calculated control—where power is neither given nor negotiated, but constructed, wielded, and expanded until all opposition is extinguished. The ruthless art of power is not for the weak. This book is a weapon, a masterstroke of calculated dominance, exposing the brutal truths of control, strategy, and manipulation that have defined history’s most formidable rulers, conquerors, and tacticians.
مواد بقلم Jag DeSaint
120 مادة
- تعليقIndustrial Policy
Announced investment is not a statistic and industrial policy should stop being scored on it
Construction spending on manufacturing plant rose from an annual rate of 82 billion dollars in 2021 to 215 billion in 2025, while the manufacturing output index moved from 97.6 to 97.3 on a 2017 base of 100. Lag complicates the comparison: a plant paid for in 2024 reaches an output index years later, which argues for waiting rather than scoring the policy on its announcements.
بقلم Jag DeSaint
- تعليقWorkforce & Skills
A national credential is built for a job market no state actually has
The Bureau's 2025 occupational file lists twelve local specialities for each of 51 jurisdictions, 612 rows holding 351 different occupations, and 204 of those appear on exactly one state's list. The same file records no credential at all, so an employer certificate would have to publish numbers a stranger can count before it could replace the system it criticises.
بقلم Jag DeSaint
- تعليقHousing Supply
Federal policy cannot raise housing supply and should pay for authorisations instead
Idaho authorised 0.98 new private housing units per thousand residents in July 2026 and California 0.21, a ratio of 4.66, under the same federal tax code and the same policy rate. Idaho's house-price index has still multiplied 8.78 times since 1980 against California's 9.75, so authorising more has not by itself held appreciation down.
بقلم Jag DeSaint
- تعليقMigration & Demography
The labour-force series do not record who arrived, and participation is not a substitute
No file on this site records a worker's place of birth, so nothing here can attribute a share of recent capacity to migration. The rate usually offered as a stand-in fell 0.2 points between 2023 and 2025 while prime-age participation rose 0.3 points to its six-year high of 83.6 percent, a divergence the two different populations can produce with nobody arriving at all.
بقلم Jag DeSaint
- تعليقIndustrial Policy
A state incentive buys a location decision, not national capacity
Plant construction spending rose from an annual rate of 75 billion dollars in 2020 to 244 billion in 2024; manufacturing output ended 2025 4.3 index points above 2020, and employment three hundred thousand below its 2023 peak. Plant takes years to run, so those readings are not yet a verdict.
بقلم Jag DeSaint
- تعليقWorkforce & Skills
Administrative capacity should be counted in decisions per qualified head, not in the occupational group that carries its name
Office and Administrative Support is the largest occupational group in the country, 17,753,410 jobs of a 51-state total of 155,495,750. The District of Columbia, where administration is the industry, ranks last of the 51 on it, at 76.871 such jobs per thousand against Tennessee's 129.94.
بقلم Jag DeSaint
- تعليقIndustrial Policy
A facility count is not a pollution count
Our environment dataset holds one number per state, the count of facilities reporting to the EPA Toxics Release Inventory. It is a measure of industrial density, the file says so plainly, and I am not going to chart it.
بقلم Jag DeSaint
- تعليقWorkforce & Skills
Jobs are counted where they are done, not where workers live
In July 2026 the District of Columbia held 179.7 jobs for every 100 people in its own labour force, and Maryland held 87.9. The two numbers are measuring different things, and state rankings that put them side by side quietly mislead.
بقلم Jag DeSaint
- تعليقEnvironmental Permitting
Whether permitting is slow can only be answered by counting the applications still waiting
Housing units authorised by permit fell from an annual rate of 1734 thousand units in 2021 to 1431 in 2025, a drop of 303. That series counts decisions leaving the permitting system and never the applications sitting inside it, and a count of departures is consistent with any waiting time at all.
بقلم Jag DeSaint
- تعليقIndustrial Policy
The industrial policy number nobody sets a target for
Output per hour in the nonfarm business sector stands 18 percent above its 2017 base. No industrial programme claims that gain, none is measured against it, and it is the only number that decides whether domestic production survives domestic wages.
بقلم Jag DeSaint
- تعليقRegional Development
Four states now fund themselves on a price they do not set
Severance is 47.2 percent of North Dakota's state tax collections and 43.9 percent of Alaska's. That is not a revenue line. It is a position in a commodity, held by a government that has to write a budget every year.
بقلم Jag DeSaint
- تعليقIndustrial Policy
Semiconductor subsidy should be judged on demand met at home, not on fabs opened
Construction spending on manufacturing plant fell from an annual rate of 244 billion dollars in 2024 to 215 billion in 2025, while U.S. semiconductor production rose from 144 to 165 on a 2017 base, its largest step in five observations. The two yardsticks now available disagree about the same year, and the one that should settle the question appears in none of this data.
بقلم Jag DeSaint
- تعليقWorkforce & Skills
The binding constraint on American port throughput sits inland, not at the berth
The occupational file puts the three heaviest concentrations of transport and material-moving work in Kentucky, Tennessee and Indiana, none of which fronts an ocean, and puts California, Florida and New York below the national share. No series held here counts a container, a berth or a crane, so the inland reading is an inference from where the work is counted.
بقلم Jag DeSaint
- تعليقWorkforce & Skills
Defence capacity is a tooling and workforce problem procurement reform does not reach
Construction spending on manufacturing plant ran at an annual rate of 125 billion dollars in 2022 and 244 billion in 2024, while core capital-goods orders held at a monthly average of 77 billion in 2022 and 77 again in 2025. This site holds no defence series at all, so the argument runs through the civilian base defence buys from.
بقلم Jag DeSaint
- تعليقEnergy & Power
Interconnection queues are a pricing failure, and faster studies will not clear them
The charge a project faces for connecting to the grid cannot be known when the decision to build is made, because it depends on which other applications are studied first, and a charge settled that way is a draw rather than a price. No series in this brief measures a queue, so the case rests on mechanism and on what the priced parts of the system already show.
بقلم Jag DeSaint
- تعليقDevelopment Finance
A development institution should give up the senior position and hold the first loss
The United States ran a current account deficit in every year from 2020 to 2025, averaging 147 billion dollars a quarter at the start of that window and 294 at the end, exactly twice as wide. An institution that gives up the senior position will report a smaller book and a worse loss record, and both are the point.
بقلم Jag DeSaint
- تعليقIndustrial Policy
The order book everyone quotes is measured in dollars that changed size
New orders for durable goods reached 311.2 billion dollars in 2025, the highest reading in five years. It is a current-dollar figure stated as a monthly rate, and it is routinely read as neither of those things.
بقلم Jag DeSaint
- تعليقInfrastructure
The permit counts say permitting is not the binding constraint on American delivery
Housing units authorised by permit fell in each of the four years to 2025, from an annual rate of 1734 thousand units to 1431, while spending on manufacturing plant rose from an annual rate of 75 billion dollars in 2020 to 244 in 2024. Neither series records a waiting time, so neither can show a queue; plant spending fell 29 billion in 2025, the year the policy rate came down.
بقلم Jag DeSaint
- تعليقDevelopment Finance
Mobilised volume is the wrong test of a development finance institution
Mobilised volume counts the private dollars that closed alongside a public commitment, and it can be audited on the day the deal signs. Additionality asks whether those dollars would have moved anyway, which nobody can observe, and an institution that adopts the harder standard will report a smaller number for more difficult work.
بقلم Jag DeSaint
- تعليقDevelopment Finance
Adaptation keeps losing to mitigation because an avoided loss is not a cash flow
The ten-year Treasury averaged 0.89 percent in 2020 and 4.29 percent in 2025, and at those rates a dollar of avoided damage arriving in thirty years is worth 76.7 cents and 28.4 cents. Turning that dollar into a cash flow needs a named obligor, and the party that funds a defence is rarely the party whose balance sheet it repairs.
بقلم Jag DeSaint
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