CommentaryInsightsPerspectivesExplainers
Section
Capital & Delivery
How projects are financed, permitted and built, and what gets in the way.
39 pieces
Pieces
- PerspectivesEnergy & Power
The stages of an energy transition that have to come first are the ones the national record does not count
The ten-year Treasury yield rose from 0.89 percent in 2020 to 4.29 in 2025 while crude ran from 39 dollars a barrel to 95 and back to 65, so both terms of a transition's first calculation moved in every year the plant was going up. The record that counts plant and vehicles closely does not count generation, transmission or interconnection at all.
- PerspectivesInfrastructure
The boundary of a public investment appraisal is drawn where the measurement stops
The capital cost in a public investment appraisal has a published national counterpart, nonresidential construction spending at 1309 billion dollars a year; the benefit stream it is weighed against has none. The discount rate decides the rest: at 4.29 percent a dollar arriving in year thirty is worth 28.4 cents, and at the 0.89 percent of 2020 it was worth 76.7 cents.
- CommentaryIndustrial 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.
- PerspectivesIndustrial Policy
Public capital is allocated by the form of the claim, and the only contest the statistics show is inside one construction total
Spending on manufacturing plant went from 75 billion dollars in 2020 to 244 in 2024 and 215 in 2025, while housing units authorised by permit ended the window 48 thousand below where they began. Neither total separates public money from private, and nothing in the record decomposes the federal balance into the claims that competed for it.
- PerspectivesIndustrial Policy
Public purchasing is an industrial instrument, and none of these series counts it as one
A government's order book transfers demand risk in a way a grant cannot, which is the reason it would work as industrial policy. What complicates the case is that the spending which is counted rose steeply, plant construction going from 75 billion dollars in 2020 to 244 in 2024, and manufacturing output is still below its 2017 base.
- PerspectivesInfrastructure
An infrastructure delivery model allocates risk, capital and blame, and it reduces none of the three
A delivery model is a contract about where the risk, the capital and the accountability sit, and only two of those can be priced and sold. The ten-year yield moved 3.4 points in five years while the record of what was built stayed one undifferentiated line, so the comparison between models is one the public record cannot check.
- ExplainerInfrastructure
What financial close means on an infrastructure project
Financial close is a single date on which every financing document signs and the lenders' money becomes a binding commitment. By the end you will know what has to be true on that day, how it differs from the announcements that come before it, and why it is the only one worth believing.
- InsightsEconomic Security
The policy rate has given back less than a fifth of its climb
On annual averages the federal funds rate rose 5.06 percentage points from its 2021 low to its 2024 peak, then fell 0.93. Everything priced against the policy rate is still being priced against most of the increase.
- ExplainerInfrastructure
What a permitting timeline is made of
A permit is the last document in a sequence, not a single decision. By the end you will be able to name the separate stages a permitting clock runs through, and say which of them a given reform would actually shorten.
- CommentaryEnvironmental 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.
- ExplainerInfrastructure
What a debt service coverage ratio tests
A coverage ratio is one division sum written into a loan agreement, and almost every argument about it is an argument about the definitions on either side of the line. By the end you will know what goes in the numerator, what the denominator fixes, and why a ratio measured in a good year says little about a bad one.
- PerspectivesWorkforce & Skills
The states that make the most things are not the states with the most engineers
Of the eight states where production work is most concentrated, four hold less than the national share of architecture and engineering jobs and two more hold barely the national share. That gap, not the incentive package, is the binding constraint on where a complex facility can be built and run.
- InsightsIndustrial Policy
New orders for durable goods fell once in five years, then jumped
Orders dipped by 4.9 billion dollars a month in 2024 and rose by 23.4 billion in 2025, the largest single-year gain in the window. The series counts dollars, not machines.
- CommentaryWorkforce & 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.
- CommentaryWorkforce & 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.
- InsightsIndustrial Policy
Core capital-goods orders took three years to return to their 2022 figure
The monthly average rose from 62 billion dollars in 2020 to 77 in 2022, then ran 75, 74 and back to 77. The figure counts dollars and is not adjusted for prices, so a return to the same number is not a return to the same order book.
- ExplainerInfrastructure
What a completion guarantee covers and when it falls away
Between financial close and the day a plant works, a project has debt and no revenue. A completion guarantee is the sponsor's promise to stand in that gap. By the end you will know what triggers its release, what it absorbs while it lasts, and why the release date is negotiated harder than the amount.
- CommentaryEnergy & 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.
- CommentaryInfrastructure
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.
- InsightsHousing & Urban Development
Two years of decline have taken the mortgage rate 0.21 points off its peak
The thirty-year fixed rate peaked at 6.81 per cent in 2023, and the two annual readings since are 6.72 and 6.6. The federal funds rate ended those same two years 0.81 points lower, nearly four times as far, though it rose before it fell.