Reliable Sources

Peter Nayland Kust
Jan 06, 2025
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Half of the challenge in performing research lies in being able to source information. While Google has become ubiquitous as the default search engine for most people, the reality is that Google is never your friend when trying to conduct effective independent research.

For that matter, neither is any other search engine.

Search engines can provide links to sources, but search engines can not tell which sources are going to be better or worse. Search engines cannot differentiate garbage content from valuable content—and Artificial Intelligence does not help make search engines any better.

Search engine results often entail sifting through a tremendous around of chaff just to find a few kernels of wheat.

These are the sources I use on a regular basis to stay abreast of what is happening in the world, and in particular what is happening in the world of economics. All of these are free to use, or have free tiers of access.

I will always encourage everyone to check their own facts and do their own research. Never take anything I write at face value—if you question the data, please do check it yourself, because I can and do make mistakes now and again. Independent checking and verification is the sort of accountability which keeps me on my toes about my own work, and helps ensure I am at least citing the facts correctly.

Economic Sources

  • Federal Reserve Economic Data: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/
    The FRED System is an open access data warehouse of data from a vast array of government and financial sources, including the Bureau of Labor Statistics, The Bureau of Economic Analysis, the US Census, ADP, the International Monetary Fund, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Technically it is a secondary rather than a primary source, as a data warehouse it provides access to data without narrative or spin, thus allowing for independent research and analysis.

  • Cleveland Fed InflationNow: https://www.clevelandfed.org/indicators-and-data/inflation-nowcasting
    The Cleveland Federal Reserve maintains a Nowcast projecting current trends in consumer price inflation given prevailing economic conditions. It is updated daily. The Nowcast is an interesting primary source of what is happening in quasi-realtime with consumer price inflation in the United States.

  • Trading Economics: https://tradingeconomics.com/
    Trading Economics is an investment data service which provides a wealth of free and open access investment and financial data, including market prices for securities and commodities, as well as economic indicators from around the world. While it is not a primary source (it pulls in data from other sources), it is a reliable secondary source that presents just the data.

  • BarChart: https://www.barchart.com
    BarChart is a financial markets tracking and analysis tool which provides a free tier with near realtime access to a variety of financial data, including stock prices, commodities prices, and a number of stock market indices for a number of finanancial markets worldwide.

  • Google Finance: https://finance.google.com

  • Yahoo! Finance: https://finance.yahoo.com

Political Sources

Corporate Media Sources (Wire Services And Aggregators)

Alternative Media Sources (Wire Services And Aggregators)

  • Citizen Free Press: https://citizenfreepress.com/
    Citizen Free Press aims to be what the Drudge Report used to be, even to aping the minimalist web page design. As with the original Drudge Report, its headlines are frequently conservative/libertarian/right-leaning, and so are its sources.

Social Media (Besides Substack)

  • X: https://x.com
    While X has a somewhat chaotic political tilt since Musk bought the platform, it still manages to serve as a reasonably useful near-realtime news feed, with a number of corporate media sources still posting updates.

  • BlueSky: https://bsky.app/
    BlueSky is a straight X/Twitter clone, and aspires to be “What X used to be”—which means the social media comments are left-leaning insipid. However, media outlets are doing their best to promote BlueSky as the new X/Twitter alternative for their realtime news postings, and so it has more or less the same utility as X as a realtime newsfeed.

Academic/Research Sources

Legal Sources

  • U.S. Supreme Court Center: https://supreme.justia.com

    All US Supreme Court opinions can be found here, including all dissents and concurrences

  • Legal Information Institute: https://www.law.cornell.edu/

    The Legal Information Institute is maintained by Cornell University. The complete US Code—literally all the statutes for the United States Of America—are available here.

  • National Constitution Center: https://constitutioncenter.org

    The National Constitution Center is a private, non-profit entity which provides online access to the text of the United States Constitution, all the Amendments thereto, as well as a number of essays and discussions about the what the Constitution says.

Style Sources

Finding information is important—presenting that information and sourcing it is also essential for reliable communication.

For most media sources, my practice within All Facts Matter is to archive a news media source and then link to that archive directly in the body of the article. However, for scholarly work, judicial opinions, or other more or less “fixed” reference materials, I will also cite the source in a footnote at the bottom of the article, broadly adhering to the citation formats of the Modern Language Association (MLA).