Constance L Hunter

Macroeconomist|Triangulating Data|@nberpubs Board|Data Junkie|Policy Wonk|my own views| #Econ101 #SecretLivesOfEconomists

[Constance L Hunter @ConstanceHunter]

Great case study!

[Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom]

Life advice nobody told you: Violent consistency is the only path to achieve what you want.

It's not going to be pretty. It's not going to draw oohs and aahs from the crowd. Because it looks messy in the days. It's getting out of bed when you don't want to. It's sitting down at your desk when you're tired. It's pounding your head into a wall one more time. It's ugly. It's unimpressive. But it works.

Quantity is a necessary precursor to quality. You cannot create once and hope for it to be perfect. You have to create a lot. Every single day.

I recently came across a story in Art & Fear that I love:

A ceramics teacher split a class into two groups. One would be graded on the quantity of their output, the other would be graded on the quality of their output. On the final day, the first group would have their total output of pots weighed, while the second group would have one pot judged.

When grading day arrived, something fascinating happened:

"The works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the 'quantity' group was busily churning out piles of work—and learning from their mistakes—the 'quality' group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay."

Quality is a byproduct of quantity. Violent consistency. That's the real recipe.

[Constance L Hunter @ConstanceHunter]

Excellent advice from @drgurner on how being comfortable with discomfort is where the growth occurs. Also, as one of my mentors says, egos are expensive! Don’t let yours rule a situation, it could end up being quite costly

[Dr. Julie Gurner @drgurner]

Early in my career, I did some work in a supermax prison. My mentor was a Holocaust survivor & psychiatrist.

Here are 5 lessons I’ll never forget, and hope you don’t either...

[Constance L Hunter @ConstanceHunter]

@CoachDanGo Do it standing up if you really want to ensure you have adequate balance.

[Constance L Hunter @ConstanceHunter]

@tunguz Both on this platform and IRL.

[Constance L Hunter @ConstanceHunter]

@elerianm @SamRo 💯 agree! Though that plug is missing Latin America. :-)

[Constance L Hunter @ConstanceHunter]

@Brad_Setser It makes more sense to borrow if the gulf states believe the war will wrap up in the next several weeks/months. But there is a tipping point where selling assets would be the sensible action. If we get to that point I expect markets will be much lower than where they are today.

[Constance L Hunter @ConstanceHunter]

@Brad_Setser But selling also has consequences for global capital markets. There is no way around that.

[Constance L Hunter @ConstanceHunter]

The collapse of the AMOC is one of those tail events that is hiding in plan sight. The probability of the event happening is increasing and there limited ways to hedge against it other than massive investment in reducing carbon dioxide and methane emissions in short order.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

This should be a bigger story. 

Scientists are more concerned than ever that a critical Atlantic current will collapse soon and wreak havoc on North America and Europe. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, is a massive conveyor belt of ocean currents that transports water from the tropics to the Atlantic. 

Without it, severe weather would impact both regions at potentially devastating rates.

These scientists aren't just warning us about an environmental issue—they're sounding the alarm about a climate threat that could fundamentally rewrite how future generations survive on our planet.
https://t.co/q9ANe0kzv2

[Constance L Hunter @ConstanceHunter]

If you cannot see that this is the future of energy you are not looking at the world with your eyes open.

[Chris Meder @EVCurveFuturist]

Spain is crushing it ⚡🇪🇸

Solar is delivering the equivalent of 27 nuclear plants during the day. Pumped hydro stores ~3 nuclear plants worth. Batteries already stepping in.

This isn’t a generation problem anymore. It’s storage scale.

Energy scarcity → energy timing. #BESS

[Constance L Hunter @ConstanceHunter]

#TweetoftheDay

@BrianWillott 👏🏻

[Brian Willott Farms @BrianWillott]

They should change the name to "Strait of Schrödinger". It's both open and closed at the same time.

[Constance L Hunter @ConstanceHunter]

@Rory_Johnston @Bob_McNally Two of the best!

[Constance L Hunter @ConstanceHunter]

The economics of solar panels make this a much more viable proposition than one might expect.

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

France passed a law requiring solar panels on every parking lot with more than 80 spaces.

Parking lots over a certain size have three to five years to cover at least half their surface area with solar canopies or face fines.

The projected output: up to 11 gigawatts of capacity, the equivalent of 10 nuclear reactors.

The panels shade the cars. They can charge EVs directly underneath them. They generate electricity for the grid. The parking lot goes from dead infrastructure to power plant without using a single additional acre of land.

France plans to increase solar tenfold and double wind capacity by 2033.

The US has approximately 800 million parking spaces. Eight hundred million. Most of them are uncovered asphalt sitting in direct sunlight.

Why aren't we doing this?

[Constance L Hunter @ConstanceHunter]

Move over ping pong diplomacy, now we have ice hockey diplomacy.

I expect to hear more about this from @tomkeene on Bloomberg Surveillance this morning.

[Reuters @Reuters]

Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney mixed diplomacy with hockey, taking the ice with players from the Ottawa Charge during Stubb’s first formal bilateral visit to Canada

[Constance L Hunter @ConstanceHunter]

Because the world needs this type of palate cleanser today.

@dog_rates earning my ❤️with each post.

[WeRateDogs @dog_rates]

This is Sadie. She was finally reunited with her human, astronaut Christina Koch, after her mom’s voyage around the moon took her the furthest any human has ever been from their dog. She can't wait to hear all about the universe. 14/10

[Constance L Hunter @ConstanceHunter]

@Rory_Johnston We also have governments blunting the demand destruction by lowering taxes, releasing reserves. A rational response but one that suggests most people are underestimating the length of time the conflict goes on. Bandaids only work on surface wounds.

[Constance L Hunter @ConstanceHunter]

And you wonder why taking a red eye to Pakistan and negotiating for 21 hours didn’t work? Science suggests the odds were against it working regardless of the differences which are considerable.

[Nicholas Fabiano, MD @NTFabiano]

Sleeping <6h a night for 2 weeks reduces cognitive performance equal to 2 nights of total sleep deprivation.

[Constance L Hunter @ConstanceHunter]

This is why I am so disciplined about my sleep routine. Going to bed and waking up at the same time every day is critical for those who have trouble sleeping. Meditation and non-sleep deep rest are also quite helpful.

@hubermanlab has a great one that is free on @YouTube.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

The scariest finding in this paper: the subjects couldn't tell it was happening.

UPenn ran this study on 48 healthy adults. One group slept 8 hours. Another slept 6. Another slept 4. For 14 straight days. They tested cognitive performance every 2 hours from 7:30am to 11:30pm.

The 6-hour group's reaction times, working memory, and sustained attention deteriorated on a near-linear curve. By day 14 they were performing at the same level as someone who hadn't slept at all in 48 hours. The 4-hour group hit that threshold by day 6.

Here's the part that should unsettle everyone who thinks they "do fine" on 6 hours: the subjects' self-reported sleepiness flatlined after the first few days. Their brains kept getting worse. Their perception of how impaired they were stopped updating. The cognitive decline was invisible to the person experiencing it.

The researchers found a hard threshold. Any wakefulness beyond 15.84 hours in a day produces cumulative neurobiological cost. That cost compounds every single day you exceed it and does not reset with a weekend of sleeping in.

About 35% of American adults sleep less than 7 hours a night. 40% of those get 6 hours or less. In 1942 that number was 11%. We built an entire professional culture around a sleep schedule that this paper says is functionally equivalent to pulling consecutive all-nighters.

"I'm fine on 6 hours" is the most common response to sleep research. The first thing chronic sleep debt destroys is your ability to notice chronic sleep debt.

[Rory Johnston @Rory_Johnston]

Very cool seeing the wave of empty tankers heading to the US to pick up some desperately needed crude for Hormuz-starved markets.

All the tankers on the map below are empty VLCCs (~2 million barrel capacity each) currently heading for the US Gulf Coast.

[Lincoln Square @LincolnSquareHQ]

2pm ET TODAY: EIU's Democracy Index 2025 evaluates the democratic health of 167 countries. EIU's Democracy Index 2025 evaluates the democratic health of 167 countries. Macroeconomist @ConstanceHunter of @TheEIU talks to @eisendrath LIVE on Lincoln Square to tell us where the United States fares on this list.
https://t.co/OB0yKuWfFx

[FedResearch @FedResearch]

The authors estimate that the tariffs implemented through November of 2025 can explain the entirety of excess inflation in the core goods category and contributed to a 0.8 percent boost in core PCE prices through February 2026. https://t.co/bVGHP3qhhK #FEDSNote