FISCAL INCONTINENCE.

In Reason, Veronique deRugy notes, "Lawmakers have to show they'll back the national debt with future fiscal surpluses, which means reining in government spending."  That echoes the ancient Keynesian policy prescription of balancing the federal budget over the business cycle, which back in the day came bundled with the idea that a fiscal policy so conceived could help fine-tune the economy, with the deficits mitigating the pain in downturns and the surpluses putting a check on investors and consumers during expansions.

THE THOUSAND DESCRIPTIONS OF RENT SEEKERS.

In The Daily Economy, Vincent Geloso comes up with an infelicitous new one, "beefsteak socialists," brownish on the outside, red on the inside, that brown referring to a shirt, to describe a Rube Goldberg-esque accretion of reform upon reform that provides plenty of work for bureaucrats and rent-seekers, each accretion further reducing allocative efficiency.

Two problems immediately emerged. First, this enlargement of government power raised the value of possessing government. Second, government interventions produce unintended consequences. As a result, rather than repeal the original measure, governments frequently respond with another intervention, followed by another. The unintended consequences multiply, and so do the interventions. Growth grinds down to a halt.

There is a risk in blowing all the interventions up and starting over.  Mr Geloso uses the accretion of interventions in Chile leading to a quasi-Marxist government gaining control over a corpse, after which a military coup and shock therapy might have been the most extreme form of starting over.  On a smaller scale, abolishing the Interstate Commerce Commission and privatizing Conrail might have done some good, that is, until the regulatory state started adding on again.

That, Mr Geloso argues, is the nature of public choice: rent-seekers and careerists in the saddle.

The danger for the United States is not that it has reproduced Chile in 1973. It plainly has not. (Yet.) The danger is that American politics is beginning to reproduce the underlying dynamic: rival movements encouraging one another to abandon liberal restraints.

By "liberal restraints," he means modestly ambitious governance with enumerated, separated, and limited powers.  That's not how one makes a name in "public service," and that's how things go wrong.  "There must first be a long process of politicization of every aspect of social and economic life. Reverse that politicization and you halt the weakening."

SOONER THAN YOU THINK.

The crashing in of the real debt ceiling, that is, which is when bond traders buy Treasuries only at deep discounts.  How deep is deep?  Ask the man who trades them for a living?  "Ballooning US debt is a ticking time bomb, billionaire investor David Rubenstein says."

Economists have long contemplated, in the abstract, government activity crowding out private sector investing or consumer spending.  Mr Rubenstein is fretting about government interest payments crowding out government spending on armaments.

"We have, as everybody now knows, $40 trillion of debt. Now, historically, if you go back over the last, let's say, 300 or 400 years, whenever a country paid more interest on its debt than it did for its national security, that's a sign of weakness in the country. Right now, we've crossed that threshold. We're now paying more in interest every year than we are paying on our national defense, and we're paying a trillion dollars in interest, a little bit more than that now, but we pay about a trillion dollars in national defense. And as that continues, the interest goes up, and the money available for defense goes down. That tends to weaken your national security."

That might depend on the going concern value of the United States, as people might still be willing to hold Treasuries to finance the production of Tomahawks and Patriots and all the other tools the Pentagon possess to stay protected against flying Iranian gas mains and whatever else the primitives are cobbling together, and the dollar might still be less shaky than all the other candidates for global reserve currency.

That noted, those deep discounts might present gradually at first.  "Surging US Treasury yields are starting to spook investors."  All at once, sooner than you think?

A "disorderly bond sell-off" is now the top market tail risk. Investors remain bullish, however, on corporate earnings, the AI investment cycle, and economic growth.

US Treasury yields have faced upward pressure throughout September, driven by persistent signs of inflation and elevated crude oil prices.

"Disorderly bond sell-off" is trader-speak for "all at once."  Buckle in.

LET'S GET REAL ABOUT CRUDE OIL PRICES.

Markets adapt.

Oil prices are very far away from crisis levels in real and nominal terms.

Brent is near $96 per barrel. In today's dollars, the 2008 crisis peak was $202, the Arab Spring $183, the 1980 oil shock $162 and the 2022 Ukraine war spike $139.

Each geopolitical event creates new… pic.twitter.com/MA9T1WIVkC

— Daniel Lacalle Official Account (@dlacalle_IA) September 9, 2026

I've had ample occasion to contemplate the real price of crude oil and its distillates over the years.  It's up to somebody else to do the research capturing the effect of additional interfuel substitutions that might not have been on the market twenty years ago.  I'll leave it to others to put together a Mark J. Perry Venn diagram involving people objecting to the current war against Iran while favoring the continuation of Ukraine's war with Russia when the subject of, oh, disrupted diesel fuel supplies comes up.

THROWING MONEY AROUND.

You can take the proposal seriously, as National Review editors do.

Reflexive apologists for Trump’s proposal have tended to focus on the sins of the other party — pointing, for instance, to the unnecessary and inflationary stimulus checks that the Democrats issued in 2021, and to President Joe Biden’s illegal attempt to forgive student loans. But this isn’t a defense, so much as a confession. Those policies were bad, and the Republican Party opposed them. That they were attempted was a disgrace; it was not a catch-all excuse for further reckless behavior. Whatever problems may exist in the American economy in 2026, there is no need for a round of debt-financed $5,000 checks. The central problem of our political era is the persistence of inflation and the associated increases in the cost of everyday goods. Trump’s suggestion would worsen, rather than improve, that issue.

The role of the federal government within the U.S. economy ought to be to provide a stable framework within which free people may thrive. When it taxes, it ought to tax predictably and consistently, with the purpose of covering its spending. When it spends, it ought to spend on those functions that only the national government can fulfill. President Trump’s proposal cannot be squared with the federal government’s proper role — nor, for that matter, can it be justly described as “policy.”

Or, following the Babylon Bee, satire is the best response. "Trump Pledges That If Voters Defeat Socialism In November, They Will Each Get An Equal Redistribution Of Wealth From The Government."  I vaguely remember something called Ricardian equivalence, and Robert Barro asking, "Are Government Bonds Net Wealth?"  There might be a corollary involving helicopter droppings, er, printed money, although even in a hyperinflationary environment, having a windfall of helicopter droppings leaves you slightly less badly off than if they fall on your neighbor.

YOU CAN'T RELEGATE US, WE'RE GOING INDEPENDENT.

The corona shutdowns led to the National Collegiate Athletic Association extending years of eligibility, primarily by allowing more generous "redshirting" or designating players for a variation of injured reserve status.  Recently the association reverted to its pre-pandemic eligibility and redshirting rules, but a few players who had corona-era eligibility left finished their collegiate careers and signed with the professional leagues.

At least for the time being.  Consider, dear reader, a college player who signed a pro contract, didn't make the team, and then treats that remaining year of eligibility as a kind of option to return to his college team.  Sounds like the sort of thing lawyers could litigate all day.

Does a collegiate coach, athletic director, or conference commissioner use a variant on "card laid, card played," to tell such returning players, NO, we are pleased to count you among our alumni, and our recruiting pitch offers opportunities to catch the eye of pro scouts, it does not guarantee it.

IT'S CALLED PUBLIC CHOICE, SETH.

Labor Day weekend is upon us, and children socialist agitators of all ages, including Seth Sandronsky, are obligated to dial up the rhetoric.  "Placing the drive for profits before the needs of the human population is the normal operation of the capitalist system as ruling class interests use two-party politics to craft laws and policies that benefit elites, billionaires, and corporations."

That Complex Proposition is right out of Marxian political economy, where the "capitalist state" is the executive committee for the ruling class.  "Two-party politics," or as the Serious People on the Sunday shows call it, "bipartisan compromise" might have the interests of elected officials and their bureaucrats and court intellectuals in mind, not necessarily those of the hypothetical capitalists extracting ever more surplus value.

There's never been much good done by those who affect to trade for the public interest, and dressing it up with the rhetoric of Scientific Management doesn't change the reality.  "Public power is the power to generate rents, and yes, rent-seekers seek rents, politicians generate them, and the combined effect is often to dissipate rents."  Comrade Sandronsky could have made a case for limiting the ability of governments to generate and dissipate rents, and provide additional procedural checks on corrupt public officials and unelected bureaucrats, but, this being Labor Day weekend, the polemics come first.

The contradictions of economic nationalism and the world order are growing. An affordability crisis of working and poor people stateside as their tax dollars flow away from them and into the congressional-military-industrial complex is the tip of a proverbial iceberg. The worsening climate crisis that profits billionaires and corporations in the short-term as the political duopoly facilitates this ecocide is a wake-up call for movement politics.

Comrade Sandronsky is giving the same sort of speech about worsening conditions and contradictions of capitalism that have been popular for over 150 years.  We keep hearing the call for that movement (pronounced mewve-ment) politics for years, to no lasting effect.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE COURT INTELLECTUALS.

I've argued that much of the propensity for university faculty to register as Democrats is self-interest concealed in the rhetoric of Governance by Wise Experts.

Tonight, a parable.  Suppose that it's hard to be a Man of System because those refractory citizens recognize what it is the Men of System are doing and change their behavior to take advantage of, or to protect themselves from, the policies those Wise Experts drew up (as if in Vince Lombardi's playbook) and the policy doesn't deliver what its designers anticipated?

In political economy, particularly in macroeconomic policy, what I've hinted at has a short descriptor, "Lucas critique," for the Chicago income theorist who worked through all the possible audibles the refractory citizens might call.

CONFLICT CREEP.

Outside the Beltway's James Joyner, who knows a few things about international relations (countries boffing each other, mostly), suggests that what goes on across the Berezina might be worth paying attention to.

Whether this is “state sponsored terrorism” really depends on the nature of the attack. If it was simply aimed at a cargo plane transporting materiel to Ukrainian forces, it is a legitimate military target and any incidental loss of civilian life would be collateral damage. If, on the other hand, it was intended to destroy civilian infrastructure to send a political message, it’s terrorism.

Regardless, it represents an escalation in the proxy war with Russia. While we’ve supported—rightly, in my view—Ukraine against Russia’s illegal invasion, supplying intelligence support and ever-more-lethal weapons, we’ve been careful not to directly participate in hostilities against Russia. Until now, Russia has assiduously avoided kinetic attacks into NATO territory, although there have been violations of NATO airspace and some stray shots that have made it across the border into Poland.

A direct attack on a core NATO ally could certainly trigger enforcement action under Article 5. There will be little appetite for a direct war with Russia, but this may result in further lengthening of the leash put on Ukraine’s use of Western assets.

The dogs of war have been given longer leash for some time, possibly for nearly twenty years looking back to that color revolution in Ukraine that put the current government in power.  Arguably, the War was festering for many years prior to 1939, considering the Spanish civil war, Japan's imperial ambitions in China, and the colonies of the nineteenth century empires changing hands.  Buckle in.

SECTARIANISM TODAY, SECTARIANISM TOMORROW, SECTARIANISM FOREVER.

Les Leopold asks, "Can DSA’s Brand of Socialism Attract the Broader Working Class?"

No, for reasons that are not too removed from my assessment of a few weeks ago.

When DSA candidates take to the field, they focus almost entirely on populist economic demands—housing and food affordability, fair taxes on billionaires, and Medicare for All. These are socialist in the sense that Social Security, libraries, fire departments, and our current Medicare are socialist, and yet they are also firmly embedded in our capitalist system.

I have yet to encounter a DSA candidate who discusses truly socialist reforms, like the elimination of large private enterprises and workers’ control of the corporations that employ them.

A strict understanding of things socialist suggests that anything "embedded in our capitalist system" involves acceptance of the wages system, and there is no requirement that libraries, fire departments, or pensions, let alone things like roads and water mains, must be government services (the old "mixed economy" compromise.  It is also no accident, dear reader, that Mr Leopold, good communist that he is, will be dismayed that Marxism-DeLeonism is a foreign concept to the priviligentsia who align with "democratic socialism."

PUT YOUR FAITH IN EMERGENCE.

Religious dogma might be useful.  Consensus is poison.

So argues Matthew Continetti in "Inoculated Against Tyranny," asserting, "The Constitution’s separation of powers and guarantee of individual rights kept America’s revolution from devolving into fratricide."

LET THE THING BE PRESSED.

Over the weekend, United States Central Command claim to have destroyed drones or rockets carrying mines (or perhaps trash bags or beachballs) in order to effect some kind of closure of Hormuz, or at least the spooking of energy traders.  In retaliation, the mullahs flipped some flying gas mains toward United States bases in Jordan, apparently without effect.  We'll see what Our President orders up.

PUTTING THE WORST POSSIBLE SPIN ON GOOD NEWS.

Bloomberg's headline is straightforward enough.  "Hormuz Oil Flows Rising as Gulf Giants’ Ramp Up Accelerates."  The first paragraph of the article, however, is a clanker.

The flow of crude through the Strait of Hormuz is creeping higher as producers across the Middle East boost exports in the face of Iran's lingering threat to shipping. The increase is keeping global crude oil prices in check.

The reports I'm seeing of gas lines that Iranian wags, if there are any wags, might be calling "Jimmy Carter's revenge," and the news of the gangbangers that used to raise havoc in Iraq or Lebanon being mobilized to cow the population, strongly suggest to me that if those are the effects of Iran's "threat to shipping," I'd hate to see what defeat looks like.

TRUST, ONCE LOST, IS HARD TO REGAIN.

That recovery is particularly difficult when it is people entrusted with making decisions on the basis of their wisdom or their probity betray it in an egregious way.  In The (Not Detroit) Free Press, Erick Erickson notes, "The same government that used pandemic powers to shutter churches and businesses now wants surveillance cameras on street corners and data centers in backyards. You can’t blame people for saying no."

It's not that the warning signs haven't been with us for some time.  Cold Spring Shops posts have used variations on "governance by wise experts" since the fall of 2009, generally in a skeptical way.

That People in Authority dismissed the observations of — wait for it — medical doctors noticing masked people's glasses fogging up in grocery stories and suggesting the mask mandates and six foot circles and the rest were theater, not policy, probably resurrected the notion of a credibility gap.  Yes, dear reader, my life from adolescence onward has been structured by credibility gaps: thus another one emerging during the Jarrett regency's corona tyranny didn't come as a shock.

THE RENT GRADIENT COMES FOR YOUR BOWLING LANES.

Fortune contributor Catherina Gioino lodges a lament.  "Bars, bowling alleys, and movie theaters cost too much to run and visit. Americans have run out of places to hang out and we’re paying with our health."

Well, yes.

That's the down-side of the emergence of the Creative Class.  [Long] ago, I noted, "One, the premium to locating in the most creative communities bids up rents. That produces an arbitrage opportunity, even in recession."  Apparently, though, gentrification leads to a more valuable bundle of urban services, something that has value to Creative Class types.

Cater to the Grabowskis or salt-of-the-earth types of whatever ethnic origin when the yuppies show up, and suddenly your favorite hangout goes away.

Using Census data, researchers tracked 12 categories of what sociologists call "third places"—among them coffee shops, libraries, museums, recreation centers, and restaurants—and found widespread closures across every single category from 2019 to 2021, with the losses hitting hardest in rural areas and communities with larger Black, Hispanic, and less-educated populations.

Not only are these places disappearing, the ones still standing cost more to walk into than they used to. Jessica Finlay, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Colorado Boulder and one of the study's researchers, immediately agreed when asked how much of this is an affordability story. "Absolutely. I mean, everything costs more," she said. "Cost of living is so much more, and gentrification is absolutely happening." It's a dynamic she's watched shrink the pool of people who can still afford to be regulars anywhere.

The article focuses on urban clustering during and after the corona shutdowns.  The dynamics would have worked out the same irrespective of whether Dr. Faustus Fauci got his way or was properly told to sod off.  "Sooner or later, urban agglomeration economies come for neighborhoods an easy journey to the central business district."

Finlay sees gentrification cutting the same way as rising costs elsewhere: It can bring in new services, but not necessarily to the people who were already there. Drawing on interviews conducted across the Twin Cities, where she has based part of her research, Finlay described participants who said a revitalized neighborhood no longer felt built for them, with people saying they were followed in stores, or were told her they had to dress differently just to shop nearby.

New arrivals don't have to pass judgement on yobbish neighbors if the bid-rent curve prices the yobs out.

THE GAS PUMP PAIN ARISES MAINLY IN UKRAINE?

The Establishment's Narrative^(TM) on higher summer gasoline prices is "It's All Trump's Fault."  These are the same fear-mongers who were sounding off about crude oil prices north of $175 per barrel in the aftermath of rogue Iranian elements attempting to close the Strait of Hormuz.

UTTERLY PATHETIC.

More folly from the self-styled progressives.  "‘Utterly Unsustainable’: Employer-Sponsored Healthcare Costs Set to Keep Surging."  Search the essay in vain for any acknowledgement that such "healthcare costs" have nothing to do with trade-tested betterments.  You get the usual talking points.  "While Democratic leadership continues to oppose a Medicare for All system overwhelmingly favored by their party’s voters, progressives point to studies showing that such a program will save lives and money."

LET THE THING BE PRESSED.

Stephen "Vodka Pundit" Green is not yet urging "Faster, please."  Historian Scott Powell suggests the time to finish the mullahs is now.

Iran is already a militarily defeated nation. To allow this evil, suicidal regime to rebuild and reconstitute itself would be a tragic missed opportunity to liberate the vast majority of Iranian people who want to live as free people under some form of democracy. And fundamentally, it would be a dereliction of duty to the greater Middle East. Defeating this regime also puts the nail in the coffin for Hamas, Hezb’allah and the Houthis, all of which dramatically improves the prospects for peace in the region.

A lot can change in a few days.  Last week came the usual sort of posturing.  "Tehran has vowed not to reopen the critical shipping lane “until America corrects its behavior,” despite a looming agreement with Oman reported to have been close for days."  As well as the usual scavenger hunt in the arsenal.

Iran's regime fired two ballistic missiles toward shipping traffic in the Persian Gulf on Tuesday. The United Arab Emirates has had enough. Abu Dhabi responded by severing every trade, commercial, and financial transaction with the terror state, effective immediately.

Roughly $28 billion in annual commerce is now gone. The UAE was Iran's single largest source of imports, a lifeline the mullahs just torched with their own missiles.

UAE Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Afra Al Hameli made it official Wednesday. No end date. No conditions. Just a hard stop tied to Iran's escalating aggression.

“All trade, commercial exchanges, and financial transactions with Iran have been halted until further notice.”

It helps if you have ordnance that works if you seek concessions.  Dud missiles scratchbuilt with whatever the mullahs scraped together might even have changed minds at CNN.  "Iran has lost significant control of the Strait of Hormuz."

NEITHER BEER NOR BRATWURST.

Imagine, dear reader, a human interest story from ninety years ago documenting the human side of the Volksbund.  Maybe it could incorporate the rhetoric of empathy and inclusion.

World War I traumatized Germans on both sides of the Atlantic – though in different ways. In Wisconsin and across the United States, war with Germany led to a wave of anti-German hysteria. Self-proclaimed “superpatriots” attacked ethnic Germans (whom they assumed disloyal unless proven otherwise) and denigrated their culture. Sauerkraut became “liberty cabbage” and hamburgers “liberty sandwiches.” Some Germans were forced to kiss the American flag to prove their loyalty, and a few were even physically accosted. In neighboring Illinois, a German immigrant was wrapped in a flag, forced to sing the “Star Spangled Banner,” then hanged. In such a hostile atmosphere, many German-Americans abandoned their ethnic ties. Milwaukee’s Deutscher Klub renamed itself the Wisconsin Club, and hundreds of ethnic Germans Americanized their names. The German Athens had become a shadow of its former self, and those who remained a part of the German cultural scene were left battered, bruised, and defensive.

A human interest story describing a quiet evening dealing a few hands of Schafkopf and enjoying some real beer, or perhaps a livelier story involving group singing or dancing to oom-pah music might put a human face on people who are, after all, neighbors, possibly co-workers, sometimes voters.

No, strike that.  Let's deploy the full culture-studies methodology in the fall of 1938 to "contextualize" North Americans who aren't troubled by the looting of businesses and the sacking of temples; who might perceive their overseas cousins as beset by internal disorder and external punishment.

DESPERATELY SEEKING A UNICORN.

In "Taxes Need a Rebrand," Michael Jarvis makes an argument straight out of the early days of the Clinton presidency, when Hillary was actually wearing the pants.  "Too often, tax is framed as a burden instead of a form of shared investment and discussed as a technical obligation rather than the foundation that allows modern societies to function."  Just reframe 'em as "contributions."  (Try not to think of George Lakoff.)

Too often, tax is framed as a burden instead of a form of shared investment. It is discussed as a technical obligation rather than the foundation that allows modern societies to function. Schools, healthcare systems, transportation networks, courts, emergency services, climate resilience measures, and public safety systems do not emerge on their own. They depend on sustained and predictable collective investment, and taxation remains the primary way societies make that investment possible.

You get your Common Dreams commentator card revoked if you even admit of the possibility that many of the items in that passage emerged through the discovery of trade-tested betterments.