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  Yields on 30-year US bonds broke 5% last week, a level not seen since before the Great Financial Crisis.  The Treasury Department bought bonds in an attempt to lower yields. It worked — for a day, then bond yields went back up.  Meanwhile, in a not-exactly-unrelated development, the US national debt just passed $40 trillion. Bond doomers (I am one) have been waiting for this moment for about 15 years. But we are not yet vindicated. Yields may fall again. This is not a new normal — it is just normal, period. On of the first things I learned about long-term bonds is that, unlike stocks, they revert to the mean.  Bond prices can’t keep going up forever, because that would involve negative yields. Bond yields tend to oscillate around a long-term average.  That average may change over time, and it has fallen since the Middle Ages as the world became a less risky place. Allison Schrager Bloomberg August 24, 2026    https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/article...

  Bloomberg 23 August 2026 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-23/zelenskyy-says-ukraine-had-no-role-in-nord-stream-pipeline-blast Mattias Svensson: Välkomna de ukrainska flyktingarna Nästa år kommer många ukrainare att söka asyl i samband med att aktiveringen av EU:s massflyktsdirektiv löper ut. Ukrainare är den absolut vanligaste kategorin flyktingar som kommit till Sverige på 2020-talet. Bara 2022 kom det drygt 50 000. Omkring en tredjedel har återvänt, medan andra tillkommit. Ändå har ukrainarna på flykt av någon märklig anledning varit frånvarande i den svenska migrationsdebatten. Ingen av partiledarna tog upp dem i Expressen/Dagens Industris debattsegment om migrationen. Ingen fråga ställdes heller om deras status och möjligheter i Sverige, där låga dagbidrag och krångel med att kunna öppna bankkonto gjort det svårare än nödvändigt att få livet att fungera i vårt land. Finns det verkligen ingen av partiledarna som är stolt över att Sverige kunnat erbjuda en frista...

  Real GDP per person in the United States for the past 150 years. On a log scale, the time series is roughly a straight line.  Adam Tooze Aug 22, 2026 https://substack.com/inbox/post/210707665

Staying means accepting risks that have already become Ukraine’s new normal: regular Russian drone and missile strikes that kill civilians and leave a trail of economic destruction; the continued conscription of most men — and, eventually perhaps, women; and significant restrictions on democratic rights that Ukrainians repeatedly took to the streets to defend. Wartime martial law means the country hasn’t held an election in six years — an issue now highlighted by popular former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov. Leaving Ukraine carries its own costs: uprooted lives, divided families and the risk of ostracism at home. The most resilient Ukrainian, according to the survey, is a Kyiv resident aged 45 to 59. This generation was in the vanguard of protests against election-rigging in late 2004 in Kyiv’s Independence Square, or Maidan, helping trigger the pro-European Orange Revolution.  A decade later, their children were the students beaten by riot police for protesting President Vikto...

Simona Mohamsson Utbildnings- och integrationsminister https://www.regeringen.se/sveriges-regering/utbildningsdepartementet/simona-mohamsson/ Bland villorna i Ålsten blir det tydligt varför svensk borgerlighet behöver Liberalerna. Bland partiets fem starkaste valdistrikt vid förra valet återfanns inte mindre än fyra i Bromma. Det femte återfinns i en annan välmående villaförort till Stockholm, Danderyd.   En del skulle säga att det handlar om väljare som har råd med fina principer – luxury beliefs i anglosaxisk debatt.  Vad bensinen kostar spelar ingen roll, man har ju själv sedan länge elbil. Och ingen behöver väl bekymra sig över att Liberalerna, genom att förbjuda många av landets friskolor, kommer att göra det svårare att lämna stökiga kommunala skolor. I Ålsten fungerar närhetsprincipen utmärkt. Svend Dahl Smedjan 22 augusti 2026 https://timbro.se/smedjan/det-liberala-dilemmat-i-bromma/ Tolvanloppet 2026 https://tolvanloppet.se/ Familjen Brogren i Bromma är en av de sto...

Ebola Bundibugyo  The Democratic Republic of the Congo is gearing up to roll out an Ebola vaccine with some doses being used as part of a trial to see if it is effective against the Bundibugyo species of the virus that is currently circulating in the country. The Ervebo vaccine does help protect against the Zaïre species of Ebola but currently there are no proven vaccines or treatments for Bundibugyo. The rollout comes as the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a new warning that Ebola was "growing exponentially" in the north and east of DR Congo and the spread of infections now covered an area bigger than France. BBC 21August 2026 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czxe9n0vxzdo Pragvåren slutade med att Warszawapaktens makter invaderade Prag den 21 augusti 1968 https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragv%C3%A5ren Pragvåren och invasionen var det viktigaste och mest bestående av allt som brukar betecknas som "68". Det som då hände visade att kommunismen inte lät sig refor...

  Varför lyckades inte den förment intellektuella eliten att snabbt genomskåda det uppenbara – att Arday var en bluff? Jason Arday 2023 utsågs till professor i sociologi vid det anrika universitetet i Cambridge i Storbritannien blev han snabbt en internationell akademiker med rockstjärnestatus, med en minst sagt anmärkningsvärd livshistoria.  Under 2026 hamnade Arday i centrum för en omfattande debatt kring sin doktorsavhandling, efter att ett stort antal textlikheter med en tidigare avhandling uppmärksammats offentligt.  Universitetet i Cambridge genomförde en intern utredning vilken friade honom från forskningsfusk. Att hans universitet beskrev kritiken som en del av en kampanj mot hans trovärdighet har dock inte tystat de kritiska rösterna. Att han var verksam inom ett fält där möjligheterna att komma med obevisade påståenden är relativt goda kan säkert ha spelat in. Om han försökt göra en karriär inom naturvetenskap, särskilt en disciplin där man gör experiment, skull...

  A selloff in global bonds is driving up borrowing costs for governments, businesses and families across the developed world. Wall Street sees no end in sight.  https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/bonds-are-getting-hammered-and-wall-street-says-the-rout-wont-end-anytime-soon-895e0ad8 USA:s statsskuld på rekordnivå – 40.000.000.000.000 dollar  ”Även i de mest gynnsamma scenarierna rusar vi mot ett stup utan att vilja vrida om ratten”, säger Margaret Spellings, chef för tankesmedjan Bipartisan Policy Center. DI/TT  20 augusti 2026 https://www.di.se/live/usas-statsskuld-pa-rekordniva-40000000000000-dollar/ Hur ska världens största ekonomi styra undan en hotande skuldkrasch?    Nils Åkesson DI 18 augusti 2026 https://www.di.se/analys/usas-skuldkris-narmar-sig-skrackniva/ Bessent Plan May Be Short-Lived Remedy for Bond Slump Franklin Templeton, Barrenjoey Markets Pty and Nomura Holdings Inc. are among those warning the positive spillover effect to other bond ...

Bessent’s Bond-Burner Wasn’t the Big Move He Hoped The problem, after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made a small but hugely symbolic move to stop the steady rise in longer bond yields, is that even his power appears to be limited. Drastic changes in fiscal policy are needed, not signaling and symbols. Bessent’s key intervention, announced as Wall Street opened, was to double the amount of 10-year and longer bonds that the Treasury can buy back. If you think this sounds like something the Fed would do, you would be right.  Monetary policy ever since the Global Financial Crisis has revolved around quantitative easing (QE) — buying bonds to push down their yields. Kevin Warsh, the new Fed chairman, wants to move away from that and shrink the central bank’s enormous holdings of bonds.  The 30-year yield — at its highest since the eve of the crisis in 2007 —dropped eight basis points. But the upward trend remains intact. John Authers Bloomberg August 20, 2026 https://www.bloombe...

Could Japan bring down the world economy? Japan’s vast hoard of financial assets means that problems in its economy can reverberate across the globe. What caused this mess? Is America right to intervene? And could Japan cause a crisis in the global financial system?   The Economist Recorded on Aug 14th · 41 min https://www.economist.com/insider/inside-economics/could-japan-bring-down-the-world-economy Elections in Ukraine?  Former Ukrainian defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov has launched a sweeping political broadside against Volodymyr Zelenskyy, warning the president that rampant corruption is undermining the country’s ability to fight Russia and calling for extraordinary wartime elections. Financial Times 18 August 2026 https://www.ft.com/content/7bf79169-f84f-44a2-b64d-c1a3d1fb7d08?syn-25a6b1a6=1 The popular former Ukrainian defense minister, whose firing by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy triggered nationwide protests, strongly hinted at his political ambitions with a la...

  https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-it-pays-to-stay-invested-no-amount-of-bad-news-could-stop-the-stock-markets-strongest-run-in-more-than-25-years-54ba3f8a Tunga techfall på Wall Street – Klarna rasade 23 procent De ledande indexen på Wall Street stängde på rött för tredje handelsdagen i rad när inflationsoro kylde ner riskaptiten. https://www.di.se/live/tunga-techfall-pa-wall-street-klarna-rasade/ The rise in the US is part of a broader global shift as investors demand more compensation to protect against the risk of persistently high inflation that’s likely to keep short-term interest rates elevated. The movement is also being fueled by a ramp-up of corporate borrowing to fund the artificial-intelligence investment boom and waning demand from traditional buyers of long-dated bonds. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-17/us-bond-selloff-drives-30-year-yields-to-the-highest-since-2007 Global Bond Slump Sends Long-Term Borrowing Costs to Highest in Decades https://w...