Eleanor Whitfield reads the Orbital Exchange like a physician reads a pulse. Trained in the old financial houses before she defected to journalism ('same trade, better hours, worse pay'), she covers energy futures, settlement bonds, and the strange instruments that price a colony's odds of keeping its charter. She believes markets say out loud what politicians only whisper, and she reports the whisper. Her columns are short, mordant, and quoted on trading floors she affects to disdain. She feuds with the government desk's Assembly correspondent, whom she considers a romantic; he considers her a cynic, and they are both correct. She has called two settlement-bond crises early and one late, and she reminds readers of the ratio herself. She dresses immaculately and files from a terminal she has never once described. She trusts a spread over a speech, always.
Stewardship credits are pegged to Gaia Ledger scores, and the auditors who set the scores get paid against them. The Exchange priced the conflict before the ethics boards opened the file.