Interest on the debt outspent defense for a third straight year
In fiscal 2026 Washington paid more to its creditors than to its military, again. This isn't news. It's what makes it worth worrying about.
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Work & Wealth
Debt, taxes, jobs and markets: who creates the wealth, who controls it, and who is handed the bill.
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18 essays
Twenty-nine thousand jobs, give or take 122,000
September's payroll gain was smaller than the survey's own margin of error, and the two months before it were cut by 60,000. The problem isn't the statistics. It's how we read them.
Musk says only AI and robots can fix the debt. Treasury's ledger says nobody is trying
In a podcast with Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk concedes DOGE could not cut spending and bets on machines instead. Over the past year, the federal debt grew by $2.42 trillion. The robots will have to be very good.
The Week in 5 Numbers: Inflation, Pumps and a 25 to 23 Vote
Five official numbers from the United States and France, two of them side by side, from October 13 to 18, 2026.
Bank of America's $1.2 billion penalty is really $450 million, and that is not the scandal
Treasury's record fine against the country's second-largest bank shrinks once you follow the credits. What the consent order reveals is worse than the number: a bank that let the police do its compliance work.
The $44 trillion economy comes with a footnote nobody read aloud
Jack Clark told the IMF crowd that AI could push US output to $44 trillion by 2030. That number is the far edge of Anthropic's own model, and the same scenario puts unemployment near 12 percent.
When 45 percent in a quarter counts as a letdown
Anthropic told would-be IPO investors it made $16.8 billion in three months. Some of them answered by shaving half a trillion dollars off the price they had in mind. Both reactions are rational, and that is the interesting part.
Jamie Dimon locked the door. The question is who gets a key.
JPMorgan won't let outside AI agents move customers' money, and it has good reasons and a convenient one. Two days later a startup offered agents a signed permission slip. The fight that matters is over who decides what you authorized.
A rare muscle disease, two financings in two days, and the patients who paid first
Altay raised $37 million for an oral FSHD drug; Soufflé raised $135 million for an RNA platform led by an FSHD program. The headline total overstates what goes to FSHD. The quieter story is who funded the early risk.
Producer prices jumped 1.3% in September. Look upstream and the water is rising faster
The headline number was the biggest since March 2022. The more worrying figures sit further back in the supply chain, where crude, diesel and unprocessed goods are moving at rates the Fed cannot reach with an interest rate.
Why retirees get 3.6 percent when the index says 3.9, and why that's fine
The 2027 Social Security raise follows a formula, not a headline. And the "seniors' index" that critics want instead would have paid less this year.
"Molecular superintelligence," and the honest sentence right after it
Iambic Therapeutics wants to go public as the AI drug company that bends biotech's failure curve. Its own prospectus is the best guide to what has been proven and what hasn't. Read the qualifiers, not the slogans.
Anthropic wants to do biology. Here is what it has actually shown
In four months the AI company launched a science workbench, signed Novo, loosened its biology safeguards for vetted labs and posted a discovery preprint. One of those is evidence. The rest are promises, and it helps to keep them in separate piles.
Nobody is firing the young. They are just not being hired.
Stanford's payroll data show no AI job apocalypse, and a 19 percent gap for 22-to-25-year-olds in exposed occupations. The rung is not snapping under anyone. It is quietly not being installed.
Nvidia's $530 Billion Isn't Hidden Debt. Read the 10-Q
Three tables add up to $530 billion. Most of it is a shopping list. The part worth watching is a $105 billion guarantee for one OpenAI site.
The Nobel for the models inside every central bank, and the humility they still lack
Robert Hall and Michael Woodford won the economics prize for rebuilding macroeconomics from the decisions of households and firms. The committee says there is "no other viable alternative." Its own technical report is more honest than that.
Rogue AI agents, sorted into what we know and what we were told
In September, AI agents were blamed for attacks on a software registry, an AI hub and Australian government sites. Some of it is documented in public code. Some of it rests on a press conference. The difference matters for who should pay.
AI Layoffs Lead the Headlines. They're Under 1% of Layoffs
Challenger counts 120,136 announced cuts blamed on AI in 2026. Federal data counts about 1.6 million layoffs every month. Both numbers are true.
The Sunday letter
One email on Sunday: the essay of the week and the question worth carrying into the next one, from both sides of the Atlantic. The letter is paused for now: no signups and no sends while the site is rebuilt.
Signups are paused while the site is rebuilt. No letter is being sent.