CEFA-Mitarbeiter
Jag DeSaint
Executive Director, The Cefa Brief, CEFA, CEFA
Executive Director of The Cefa Brief.
Foto: The Cefa Brief
Biografie
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.
Sprachen: Englisch
Bücher von 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.
Beiträge von Jag DeSaint
120 Beiträge
- BefundMacroeconomics & Markets
Since 2022 the home-price index has risen 10.1 per cent while the median new house has sold for less each year
The index stands at 328.5 for 2025 against 298.3 for 2022, and the median price of a new house sold runs 433, 427, 419 and 415 thousand dollars over the same four readings. The two series cover different housing and report different statistics, so neither one corrects the other.
Von Jag DeSaint
- BefundTrade & Investment
Imports fell once in five years and that fall is the least reliable number in the series
Imports of goods and services dropped from 3.97 to 3.86 trillion dollars in 2023, the only decline in the run. Producer prices fell that same year, which means the one movement most often read as evidence of reshoring is the one that can least bear the reading.
Von Jag DeSaint
- BefundTrade & Investment
The trade gap narrowed in one year of six, and 2025 is now the widest reading of the six
The deficit in goods and services widened from 53 billion dollars a month in 2020 to 75 in 2022, narrowed to 62 in 2023, then widened again to 78 in 2025. The current account, which counts investment income and transfers as well, moved the other way in the final year, so the two measures of the same external gap do not agree on which year is the widest.
Von Jag DeSaint
- BefundEconomic Security
Two thirds of the M2 increase since 2020 arrived in a single year
The money stock is 4.26 trillion dollars larger than in 2020. Of that, 2.84 trillion came between 2020 and 2021, and the four years since have added half as much again, including the only contraction in the window.
Von Jag DeSaint
- BefundEconomic 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.
Von Jag DeSaint
- BefundInfrastructure
Each yearly fall in housing starts has been smaller than the one before it
The starts rate has declined in four consecutive observations, but the declines are shrinking: 0.05, then 0.13, then 0.05, then 0.01. The last of those is one unit in the final published digit, which means the series has stopped moving at a level below where it began in 2020.
Von Jag DeSaint
- BefundEconomic Security
Nearly two thirds of the five-year export gain arrived in a single year
Exports of goods and services rose 0.47 trillion dollars in 2022 and then 0.03, 0.15 and 0.10. A series that never falls looks like steady growth until you write it as steps, at which point it looks like one event followed by three quiet years.
Von Jag DeSaint
- BefundTrade & Investment
Goods exports to mainland China are lower in 2025 than in 2020
The monthly average rose to 13 billion dollars in 2021, stayed between 12 and 13 for four years, then fell to 9 in 2025, the lowest of the six readings. Imports from China fell further in the same year, so the gap between the two series is at its narrowest while exports are at their weakest.
Von Jag DeSaint
- BefundIndustrial 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.
Von Jag DeSaint
- BefundWorkforce & Skills
Prime-age participation rose four years running, then held at 83.6 percent
The share of the 25 to 54 population in the labour force went from 81.4 percent in 2020 to 83.6 in 2024, a gain of 2.2 points, and 2025 came in at 83.6 again. The headline rate, which covers the civilian population rather than one age band, gained 0.7 points over the same six readings and fell in the final year.
Von Jag DeSaint
- BefundWorkforce & Skills
The quits rate has fallen below where it stood in 2020, while job openings have not
The rate rose from 2.1 percent of employment in 2020 to 2.8 in 2022, then fell in each of the next three years to 2 percent, below where it began. Job openings peaked in the same year and remain above their own 2020 level, so the two halves of the picture no longer agree.
Von Jag DeSaint
- BefundEnergy & Power
Crude has fallen back below its 2021 price and the all-commodities index has not
West Texas Intermediate averaged 95 dollars a barrel in 2022 and 65 in 2025, three dollars below its 2021 reading and thirty below the peak. The producer price index for all commodities peaked in the same year, sits 1.6 per cent below that peak, and rose 2.2 per cent in the year crude fell 15.6 per cent.
Von Jag DeSaint
- BefundWorkforce & Skills
Broad underemployment has risen in each of the last two years, to its highest reading since 2021
The U-6 rate fell from 13.7 percent of the labour force in 2020 to 6.9 in 2022, held at 6.9 in 2023, and has since risen to 7.5 and then 8. The 1.1 points it has added from that floor exceed the 0.7 the headline unemployment rate has added from its own, but as a multiple of the headline rate the broad measure has narrowed since 2023.
Von Jag DeSaint
- BefundIndustrial 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.
Von Jag DeSaint
- BefundIndustrial Policy
Research spending has no down year, and its largest annual addition was in 2022
The quarterly average rose from 754 billion dollars in 2020 to 1,081 billion in 2025, 327 billion higher across five steps. The largest of those steps, 103 billion, came in 2022, and the three years since have added 139 billion between them.
Von Jag DeSaint
- BefundMacroeconomics & Markets
Four fifths of the rise in new business applications since 2020 came in a single year
The weekly average went from 84 thousand applications in 2020 to 104 thousand in 2021, and the four years since have added five. The 2025 reading of 109 thousand is the highest of the six, and also the third rise in a series that has fallen in the year between each one.
Von Jag DeSaint
- BefundMacroeconomics & Markets
The debt ratio fell for three years while the debt itself rose in every year the series records
Federal debt as a share of GDP fell from 122.3 percent in 2020 to 117.7 in 2023, then turned and reached 120.7 in 2025. The debt rose in every year the same file records, so what fell in those three years was the ratio and not the obligation.
Von Jag DeSaint
- BefundHousing & 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.
Von Jag DeSaint
- BefundWorkforce & Skills
The largest fall in job openings came in the year unemployment was lowest
Openings peaked at 11.2 million on the monthly average in 2022 and have fallen in each of the three years since, by 1.9 million, then 1.6 million, then 0.6 million. The largest of those falls landed in 2023, when the unemployment rate read 3.6 percent, the lowest of its six readings, and the smallest landed in 2025, when the rate read 4.3 percent.
Von Jag DeSaint
- BefundMacroeconomics & Markets
Average hourly earnings rose in every year of the window, and the price level rose by slightly more
Private-sector pay went from 29.36 dollars an hour in 2020 to 36.44 in 2025, a gain of 7.08 dollars with no down year. Restated at 2020 prices using the consumer price index, the 2025 figure is 29.30 dollars, about six cents below where the series started.
Von Jag DeSaint
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