October 2, 2026

VERONIQUE DE RUGY: ‘When Will Markets React to Debt?’ Is the Wrong Question.

Federal debt held by the public now equals the size of the annual economy — and is growing. Yet investors continue buying Treasury securities. No government bond sale has really failed, no one has suddenly refused to finance Washington’s spending, and no unmistakable moment has forced Congress to change course.

That leads some people I cross paths with in academic life to conclude that despite decades of dire warnings, we’ve managed to go from a 35% debt-to-GDP ratio in 2007 to 100% today with no devastating consequences. Their implication is that we can keep going right up to 175% in 2056, which is the trajectory if Congress fails to reform Social Security and Medicare and if interest rates rise only modestly.

The idea that all this debt won’t bring a reckoning may sound tempting, but it’s questionable at best.

And that 2056 date assumes no black swan events between now and then, which on a 20-year timeline, seems (ahem) somewhat optimistic.

Posted at 11:13 am by Stephen Green

CITY JOURNAL DIDN’T MINCE ANY WORDS WITH THIS HEADLINE: San Francisco’s Frat Houses for Pedophiles.

According to this City Journal investigation, more than 25 percent of sex offenders in San Francisco with addresses in the Megan’s Law database live in taxpayer-subsidized buildings. Many live near a park, school, or daycare, or reside in a neighborhood with a high concentration of children. They do all of this despite statewide efforts to ban concentrating pedophiles so close to children. Instead of listening to California voters, San Francisco has become a taxpayer-funded dumping ground for sex criminals.

The Taylor Street Center is one of San Francisco’s most heavily populated sex-offender residences. Located in the Tenderloin, Taylor Street houses at least 31 registered sex offenders. The taxpayer-funded California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the federal Bureau of Prisons contract the private GEO Group to run the facility.

The reentry complex can house 240 people. It hosts specialized programs for residents like “cultural diversity education,” “gender-responsive groups,” and a “weekly meditation group.” The facility sits just 400 feet from a daycare center, 1,000 feet from a fourth-to-eighth-grade school, and five blocks away from a preschool.

Any sex offender housed in the Tenderloin is bound to encounter children. Along with having a high concentration of immigrant and low-income households, the neighborhood also has the highest concentration of kids in the entire city.

What could possibly go wrong?

Posted at 10:42 am by Stephen Green

FRAUD ALL THE WAY DOWN:

Couldn’t they at least be a little less obvious about it?

Posted at 10:26 am by Stephen Green

NO RELIEF IN SIGHT: Memory executives expect RAM shortage to continue through 2028.

“For 2027, a large part of the volume is already sold out for 2027 for HBM, and the prices are much higher than 2026 prices,” Mehrotra said.

Micron doesn’t know when its supply will catch up with demand because the “demand trends of larger models, growing context, more concurrency, greater agents across enterprise, and consumer only continue to drive greater need for memory [and] greater need for memory content, as well as for higher performance memory,” Mehrotra said.

Mehrotra’s statements are supported by comments that Kim Taewoo, EVP at Micron competitor Samsung, made this week. He said HBM will account for almost 30 percent of DRAM manufacturers’ wafer capacity in 2027, compared to 20 percent this year, Reuters reported. That would limit the amount of DRAM made for consumer devices.

Ouch.

Posted at 9:40 am by Stephen Green

FRANCE:

Posted at 9:24 am by Stephen Green

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: The United Kingdom Has Outlived Its Usefulness to the Free World. “The UK got to this point by doing exactly what American leftists do — screaming ‘ISLAMOPHOBIA!’ to condemn anyone who dares point out that there is one religion that tends to be a lot more murderous than any of the others. It’s boilerplate woke leftist groupthink now to assert that those who decry violence are far more dangerous than those who are committing the violence. They’re still insisting that the real terror threat in the United States comes from white Christian dudes. Like me.”

Posted at 9:09 am by Stephen Green

MORE FROM FRANCE: ‘Student’ riots rock France as masked men torch schools and douse teachers in petrol.

Rioters have unleashed chaos in major cities across the country after what started as largely peaceful demonstrations against the state of education descended into violent chaos.

Protests began last Monday, when students and teaching staff took to French towns and cities to demand the replacement of absent teachers, an increase of educational resources, school renovations and ‘decent’ learning conditions.

But disorder has spread since Tuesday with some 600 arrests and 85 police officers wounded.

The unrest gathered pace this week after the Left-wing mayor of Saint-Denis, Bally Bagayoko, told protesters on Tuesday ‘violence can be legitimate’ in remarks that sparked fury across the country.

French Mayor Bally Bagayoko in action today:

And earlier today: “I want to salute the decision of the Communist Alternative movement to join the initiative carried by La France Insoumise and its candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the context of the upcoming presidential elections.”

Posted at 8:53 am by Stephen Green

OH NO, PLEASE DON’T SPARK WORRIES: Japan’s harsher permanent residency rules, hiked visa fees begin, sparking xenophobia worries. “The Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act sets three requirements for permanent residency: good conduct; assets or skills sufficient to make an independent living; and the person’s permanent residence being in Japan’s national interest. The government revised its guidelines Oct. 1, making the second and third requirements stricter.”

Those rules aren’t xenophobia — they’re just good sense.

Posted at 8:38 am by Stephen Green

WANNA BE A BILLIONAIRE? Well, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) showed her Senate colleagues earlier this week 10 examples of how easy it is to get there by defrauding federal spending programs.

Posted at 8:35 am by Mark Tapscott

I DON’T RECALL READING ABOUT ABSURDITIES LIKE THIS ONE INVOLVING FIRING SQUADS OR A HANGMAN:

Posted at 8:22 am by Stephen Green

GOODER AND HARDER, LA: Nithya Raman takes double-digit lead over Karen Bass in new LA mayor’s race prediction.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman has taken a comfortable lead ahead of Mayor Karen Bass on the prediction market Polymarket as the two mayoral candidates head toward the Nov. 3 mayoral runoff.

Polymarket traders gave Raman about a 58% chance of winning the election, compared with roughly 42% for Bass, which is a gap of about 16 percentage points, according to results on the site Monday morning.

Flashback: Roger Simon: Who the Hell Is Nithya Raman?

Posted at 8:22 am by Ed Driscoll

HARSH BUT FAIR: Norway’s Vidkun Quisling again defines the country’s character.

Norwegians may believe that they, too, have turned their back on the age of Quisling and assert that he was an aberration rather than an archetype, but Norway never had a true reckoning. Norwegians were allowed the conceit that responsibility for the deaths of more than one-third of Norway’s Jews lay with Quisling, and not broader Norwegian society. Current events show the danger of lessons unlearned.

As Norway promotes a self-image of progressive virtue, its leadership fans antisemitism by denying its links to anti-Zionism and pro-Hamas activism. While Norway prides itself on initiating the Oslo Accords in which Israel agreed to negotiate a path to Palestinian statehood in exchange for the Palestinian leadership’s abandonment of terrorism, in 2024, Norway both recognized Palestinian independence absent any negotiated agreement. In effect, while Oslo lectures on the primacy of diplomacy, it signaled forswearing terrorism was a commitment no one needed to keep so long as the victims were Jews.

Norway later joined the Qatar-funded International Criminal Court case against Israel that made a mockery of international law and smeared Israel with a “genocide” blood libel that rests on polemic rather than fact. Completing the moral inversion is the fact that the Norwegian government simultaneously seeks to normalize Hamas, a group whose covenant calls for genocide.

Now, Oslo appears to take its Jew-hatred a step further. It seeks to criminalize any financial dealings with Jews in the West Bank or the Old City of Jerusalem. In effect, Norway’s position is that Israel must embrace anyone claiming Palestinian heritage, yet a future Palestinian state should be Judenrein. Historically, this is ignorant for two reasons.

At least.

Posted at 8:00 am by Glenn Reynolds