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Published news and blog articles, organized by category. Browse older coverage by month or search for a topic. Undated blog guides appear after dated news.
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Bitcoin Is Back Above $80,000 — Is Crypto Becoming a Macro Hedge or Still a Risk Asset?
Bitcoin cleared $80,000 as the bond market sold off, and the bond-desk framing is that falling Treasury prices are pushing allocators toward alternatives. The hedge narrative is seductive and the empirical record is stubborn: in most…
Could High Mortgage Rates Eventually Force Home Prices Down—or Will Owners Simply Refuse to Sell?
Economic theory says rates near 7 percent should crush home prices, yet 2026 prices have held. The reason is the second adjustment channel: roughly four-fifths of borrowers hold rates under 4 percent, and they can simply decline to list —…
Global Bonds Just Suffered Six Straight Weeks of Selling — What's Breaking the Bond Market?
Six consecutive weeks of losses have pushed the 10-year Treasury toward five percent, with gilts and JGBs under the same pressure. The drivers are familiar in isolation — energy inflation, rate-hike repricing and a supply deluge — but…
Could Climate Risk Eventually Make Some American Homes Functionally Uninsurable?
Insurers have pulled back from parts of Florida, California and the Gulf Coast, and state-backed insurers of last resort have swollen into the biggest writers in those markets. Functionally uninsurable is not an asteroid scenario — it is…
Is the 30-Year Mortgage Becoming Structurally More Expensive?
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is an American peculiarity that depends on a deep, liquid market for mortgage-backed securities. With the term premium rebuilt and spreads well above their 2010s average, the quiet subsidy that made 30-year…
Why a $10 Move in Oil Can Matter More to Inflation Than a Quarter-Point Rate Increase.
Gasoline is only a few percent of the consumer price basket, but oil reaches almost everything — transport, petrochemicals, electricity and food. On standard pass-through estimates, a sustained $10 move in crude can add as much to headline…
Are Property Taxes Becoming the Next Housing-Affordability Crisis?
In the towns that boomed hardest, assessment lags are finally catching up with home values, and the resulting tax bills are landing on households that never budgeted for them. Between rising effective rates, fixed-income owners priced out…
Oil Falls Back Toward $100 — Is the Energy Shock Beginning to Ease or Just Pausing?
Crude dropped roughly two percent on September 21 after spiking above $109 last week on a Saudi pipeline attack and the Strait of Hormuz disruption. The retreat toward $100 is being read two ways — de-escalation finally being priced, or…
Would Portable Mortgages Solve America's Housing Lock-In Problem?
America's 30-year fixed mortgage is a trap and a treasure: it gives borrowers a decades-long interest-rate hedge but chains them to the house, because selling means surrendering the loan. Portable mortgages — loans that move with the…
Could Interest Expense Become One of the Largest Government Programs?
The U.S. national debt passed $40 trillion in 2026, and the interest bill now rivals defense and major retirement programs in the federal budget. Net interest is on track to become the single largest budget line after Social Security, and…
Could Assumable Mortgages Become Mainstream Again?
In a 7% mortgage world, an assumable FHA or VA loan carrying a 3% rate is worth tens of thousands of dollars in present value, and demand for assumptions is surging. Whether the mechanism can go mainstream depends less on borrower appetite…
What Happens to Governments When Refinancing National Debt Gets Much More Expensive?
A large share of the national debt issued at near-zero rates matures in the next few years and must roll over at yields far above the coupons it replaces. The United States is the largest case of the arithmetic, but every government that…
Could $100+ Oil Keep Mortgage Rates Elevated Even If Housing Weakens?
Oil above $100 feeds inflation expectations at the long end of the Treasury curve, where 30-year mortgages are actually priced. The result: the Fed could cut the short end and mortgage rates might still not fall — a decoupling with only…
Could America's Strategic Petroleum Reserve Handle Another Major Supply Shock?
After historic drawdowns, the SPR sits near 400 million barrels — against a designed capacity of 714 million and a 4.4-million-barrel-per-day drawdown rating. With Hormuz restricted and three Saudi East-West pipeline pumping stations down,…
The Fed's First Rate Hike Since 2023: Who Actually Gets Hurt First?
On September 16 the FOMC raised the federal funds target to 3.75–4.00% — its first hike in more than three years, on a 12–0 vote. The answer to who pays first is mechanical: prime-rate borrowers. Cards, HELOCs and small-business lines…
Higher Rates + Higher Oil: Is the Fed Facing a New Kind of Inflation Problem?
Headline CPI is 3.4% with energy up 16.3%, while core runs 2.4% and PPI diesel surged 24% in a single month. The Fed hiked anyway. The stagflation-flavored bind it faces has no clean precedent since the 1970s.
Homeowners Insurance Is Becoming Another Affordability Crisis
The average U.S. homeowner now pays $2,966 a year for home insurance — up $164 in a single year — while one-in-four American households already live paycheck to paycheck. In Florida the typical premium is nearly three times the national…
Mortgage Rates Are Back Near 7% — Is the Housing Market Heading for Another Freeze?
The 30-year fixed hit 6.95% this week — a fourth straight weekly rise and the highest since January 2025. With the Fed now hiking again, the affordability math that froze housing in 2023 is back on the table.
What Happens When One Human Manages 100 AI Workers?
When NVIDIA's Jensen Huang says every engineer will have 100 agents, he is describing a productivity target — and a management problem. Classical span-of-control research says one human cannot directly manage 100 subordinates. So what does…
Six-Figure Households Living Paycheck to Paycheck: What Changed in the Middle Class?
One in three six-figure earners now describe themselves as financially distressed, and 64 percent say six figures buys survival, not success. Three-quarters used a credit card in the past three months because cash ran out. Is the…
Tariffs Are Increasing the Cost of Building and Remodeling Homes
Canadian softwood lumber now enters the U.S. carrying a combined duty burden of roughly 45 percent under the all-others rate — antidumping plus countervailing plus a Section 232 national-security tariff. NAHB estimates tariffs added more…
When Your AI Agent Is the Customer, Who Does the Bank Ask?
AI agents are moving from recommending purchases to executing them — up to $5 trillion of commerce by 2030 on some projections. Banks built KYC on the assumption that a human shows up. The industry is now racing to build Know-Your-Agent,…
AI Job Anxiety Now Outweighs AI Job Optimism
Fifty-three percent of Americans fear AI could cost someone in their household a job, only 22 percent of workers worldwide feel safe, and the entry-level rung of the career ladder is visibly weakening. The surveys have flipped: workers no…
China's Imports Are Surging — What That Says About Its Economy
Imports are up 22% while exports grow 14%, and mechanical-and-electrical imports — not just commodities — are leading at nearly 30%. The default read of a weak Chinese consumer does not fit this data. The strongest counterpoint to the…
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