Benchmark 10-Year Treasury Yield

10-Year Treasury Yield Touches 5%, Highest Level in Years
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/14/business/10-year-treasury-yield-5-percent.html
One of the world’s most important interest rates hit a level recorded only once since the global financial crisis, as investors continued to rebuff the Trump administration’s efforts to sway the bond market.
 
A 5% Treasury Yield Raises New Risks for Markets, Economy
https://www.fa-mag.com/news/a-5--treasury-yield-raises-new-risks-for-markets--economy-88451.html
 
Stocks are in a late-stage bubble and poised to crash 21% next year, while Treasury yields above 5% will signal a new era of tight money, analysts say
https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/stocks-stage-bubble-poised-crash-220620239.html
 
A Guide to Owning Bonds When They Are Selling Off
https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/a-guide-to-owning-bonds-when-they-are-selling-off-be8e0a2b 

US Foreign Policy and Political Corruption

Jared Kushner’s Dollar Diplomacy
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/09/21/jared-kushners-dollar-diplomacy
Donald Trump’s son-in-law represents the kind of Washington figure for whom public office serves as a means to extraordinary wealth. 

MAGA Is Making the World Safe for Corruption
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/10/maga-foreign-policy/688352/
Far-right ideologues have transformed American foreign policy into a tool of private gain and antidemocratic reaction.

AI Safety Concerns

Can A.I. “Go Rogue”?
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/open-questions/can-ai-go-rogue
In the wake of turmoil at OpenAI and Anthropic, it’s become common to describe A.I. as a kind of person, hatching plans and pursuing desires. The truth is a little trickier.

How the Clash Between Money and Safety Created a Monumental Crisis for AI
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-anthropic-crisis-money-safety-847bc1d6
OpenAI and Anthropic, in heated competition with each other and China, are racing toward IPOs, even as they admit they could lose control of their bots.
 
We Need a Science of the AI Mind
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/we-need-a-science-of-the-ai-mind-5b1047e4
No, we aren’t doomed, but the models are advancing more quickly than our understanding of them. 

Singapore's Model for Limiting Political Corruption

Benchmarking and bonuses: why Singapore pays its politicians like bankers
https://www.ft.com/content/fa47c0db-18a6-45d6-b35d-75942a0daae8
The city-state has some of the best-paid ministers in the world. 

Populism and American Politics

Populist Republicans and Democratic Socialists Are Starting to Merge
https://www.wsj.com/politics/populist-republicans-and-democratic-socialists-are-starting-to-merge-d6f5917e
Call it the “Horseshoe party.” The extremes in both parties are starting to sound alike in their disdain for capitalism and centrism. 

Inflation and Price Levels

What Years of Inflation Have Done to American Prices
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/09/11/business/economy/inflation-us-prices-gas-food-tariffs.html
Nearly every category of product costs more than it would have had prepandemic trends continued. And many product prices are still rising faster than they were before. 

Sticky Wage Norms and the Real Wage Cost of Unexpected Inflation
https://www.nber.org/papers/w35624
We use a sample of administrative payroll data covering a large and nationally representative share of U.S. workers to study how wages adjusted during the recent inflation period. Most firms apply a single modal annual nominal wage increase to the majority of their workers, and these firm-level norms changed little during the recent period of unexpected inflation. As a result, nominal wages did not keep pace with prices for a large share of workers who stayed at their firms. Forty-three percent of workers continuously employed at the same firm over the four years spanning 2021–2024 experienced a real wage decline, with a mean loss of roughly nine percent among those who fell behind. Workers could escape sticky wage norms by changing employers — job-changers’ wages rose nearly one-for-one with inflation — but switching was too infrequent to matter for most. Even accounting for job-changers, 37 percent of all workers saw real wages decline over the 4-year period. Indexing firms’ modal raises one-for-one to inflation would have closed roughly 40 percent of the resulting shortfall relative to prepandemic trend. Drawing on cross-country evidence from Belgium, whose wages are automatically indexed to inflation, we show that incomplete wage indexation, rather than inflation itself, helps explain the persistence of depressed consumer sentiment during the 2021–2024 period.

Six Charts That Explain How Americans Really Feel About the Economy
https://www.wsj.com/economy/consumers/six-charts-that-explain-how-americans-really-feel-about-the-economy-2243d7da
Official data shows steady growth and low unemployment, but misses how rising costs have left many Americans behind. 

How Energy Is Driving Inflation—and How It’s Not
https://www.wsj.com/economy/how-energy-is-driving-inflationand-how-its-not-50560f6e
As diesel crosses $6, the risk is building that soaring energy costs will start to hurt far beyond gas pumps.

Labor Force Participation Rates in Europe

On Europe’s economy, let’s ditch the lazy stereotypes
https://www.ft.com/content/362b3139-b0de-42f1-83db-67d4572a66ce
Despite careful, consistent labor market reforms, the continent has not lived down to its image as work-shy.