Time-travel with me now, if you will, to the year 2002. I guess you could describe it as a “while the world slept” moment on December 12 of that year when CNN reported, “U.S. troops get in place in the Gulf.” The report ticked off the steps that were already being taken: Central Command leader Gen. Tommy Franks moved to the As Saliyah base in Qatar. He airlifted into place a modular command and control headquarters. Remember the briefing room with the three flat-screen TV’s that looked so sexy when the invasion began in March? That was part of the modular command center.

Three thousand troops were already in place in Qatar. The Third Infantry Division, about 30,000 strong, was conveniently “training” in Kuwait. In January, the first 25,000 combat troops in the U.S. began their mass-movement to Kuwait.

I’m taking the time to remind you of that ignominious time in our not-too-distant past because another version of that sort of build-up is already underway in Europe and the Middle East. Over the weekend, Secretary of Defense Hegseth moved three dozen U.S. tanker aircraft to bases in Spain, Germany, and the U.K. The tankers are used to refuel U.S. fighter jets and bombers, and can also be used to refuel Israeli aircraft. There have now been reports that military assets – we don’t know exactly what they are, but they could be aircraft, troops, vessels, tanks, and other heavy equipment – have been “deployed” to the Middle East.

On March 17, 2003, President George Bush, in a televised address to the nation, demanded that Saddam Hussein and his two sons, Uday and Qusay “surrender” and leave Iraq. He gave them a 48-hour deadline.

Today, in a modern twist on the dusty old tradition of a presidential address from the Oval Office, Trump took to his Truth Social account and threatened the life of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there – We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now,” Trump posted. “But we don’t want missiles shot at civilians, or American soldiers. Our patience is wearing thin. UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER.”

Is any of this starting to seem familiar? Imaginary threatened Iranian missiles that will be “shot” at “American soldiers?” Where, may I ask, are these American soldiers that Iranian missiles might be fired at? One of the general MSM round-up stories this afternoon casually said the U.S. already has 40,000 soldiers in the Middle East, without identifying their locations. I would guess Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, probably a few still in Syria, and I’m sure we’ve got some in Egypt and scattered around on small bases elsewhere.

Hey, we put them there, right? Iran is pissed off enough that they are rocketing Israel and sending armed attack drones. If they get pissed off at us, they’ll be firing at U.S. targets, which would logically include American military bases, including air force and naval stations, and Army bases that have been in Kuwait since…you guessed it…since we liberated that country from Iraqi occupation with Operation Desert Storm in 1991.

Are you detecting a trend here? The U.S. supplies Israel with about $3 billion a year in military hardware and other aid with basically no limits on how it should be used. Trump has been engaged in alleged “negotiations” with Iran over its nuclear program – which are necessary only because he cancelled the treaty that was already in place.

Trump’s negotiator is a New York real estate guy he’s friendly with, Steve Witkoff, who has owned inexpensive buildings in lower Manhattan, Washington Heights, and the Bronx through a firm called Stellar Management. He also owns commercial property and hotels like the Park Lane and high rise apartment buildings in Tribeca and Philadelphia, Chicago, and Dallas. So Iranian negotiators, who are not dummies, know that they are sitting down to discuss the future of their nuclear program with a guy who oversees the installations of new toilets in apartments and supervises the changing of sheets and swabbing out bathrooms at hotels.

At least when Bush was threatening Saddam Hussein, he was sending people like Colin Powell to the U.N. and he had a Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, who was serving in that job a second time. Rumsfeld was an asshole, but at least he wasn’t a sexual abuser tattooed cartoon like Hegseth who challenges troops to pushup contests to show them how macho he is.

But why am I even talking about Hegseth? It doesn’t matter that Trump has a real estate buddy he met in a deli in New York negotiating for him, and a Secretary of Defense who has paid off a woman to keep her mouth shut about the night he sexually assaulted her in a hotel room. It doesn’t even matter that his Secretary of State is a man he once called “Little Marco” to his face on national television.

The only one who matters is Donald Trump, and he's having so much fun, he can barely stand it. He’s bubbling over threatening Iranians and making demands. He is so blasé about Israel’s attacks on Iran and the issue behind them, nuclear weapons, Trump even took the time last night to angrily tell reporters that he’s not going to call Minnesota Governor Tim Walz about the Democratic members of the state House and Senate who were killed and wounded by one of his supporters. Why isn’t it important to call Tim Walz? Because according to Trump, Walz is “slick” and “whacked out.” “Why would I call him?” Trump said on Air Force One, on his way back to the White House so he could meet with his highly qualified national security team this afternoon in the Situation Room. “The guy doesn’t have a clue. He’s a, he’s a mess. Why waste time?”

Trump clearly thinks the people on the other end of his negotiations over nuclear weapons don’t follow the news in the United States, and don’t have anyone studying the person with whom, ultimately, they are dealing.

Oh, damn, I’m doing it again. I’m comparing the situation with Donald Trump getting ready to attack Iran with people who, while they made some terrible decisions based on some terrible information about Iraq, were at least fucking sane.

See, that’s the problem we’re having. It’s almost impossible to cover what’s going on – which is that we are apparently preparing to start a war with Iran – without involuntarily sanewashing the madman who’s making the decisions. That’s what it’s called, sanewashing, a whole word they came up with just to deal with Donald Trump.

We can’t treat this man as if he is a rational actor. A rational human being, a man with actual human feelings, would not call the governor of Minnesota childish names right after his state has had two of its political figures shot by someone who had a list of 45 more Democrats he wanted to assassinate. A rational actor would not post on a social media platform a demand that the leader of a country with which we are not at war -- yet – unconditionally surrender.

To whom? is the question that should be asked. Why would the Supreme Leader of Iran surrender to Donald Trump when the U.S. hasn’t fired a single bullet at them or dropped a single bomb. The Congress hasn’t declared war or even passed one of those lame-ass “authorization of use of force” thingees.

The answer is as obvious as the depressed look on Trump’s face watching his big military parade pass his reviewing stand on Saturday, and it was occurring to him that his big celebration of self wasn’t going at all the way he had planned. The soldiers in the tanks were waving to girls in the stands. The marching formations were out of step, looking like they hadn’t taken the whole thing seriously enough to practice marching. The crowds looked like tourists out for the afternoon in Washington D.C. with nothing else to do. The bleachers weren’t even half full. Everybody watching on TV could see the whole thing was a bust. And elsewhere, on the phone ever-present in his pocket, Trump could see that the rest of the country was in the streets, millions of them, having the time of their lives telling him to go fuck himself.

The Iranians had to be watching all this on television and going oh shit as the second night of Israeli rockets hit them. Look at Trump’s face. He is not happy. That is not good for us.

So here we are, dear readers, after the weekend that Donald Trump saw how enormous his opposition is, and how organized, and how peaceful, for crying out loud. He’s mad as hell, and as luck would have it, he has a way to show it. He can drop the world’s biggest bomb that isn’t a nuke on Iran, and nobody can stop him. All the libs, all the newspaper editorial pages, all his MAGA allies who are beginning to understand the truth about “American First.” It means, as ever, Trump first.

All those guns on those tanks on Saturday weren’t loaded, but goddamn it, he can order up some B-2 bombers and load them up with some Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs, and he’ll show them!

We can come right out and admit it: We have a big, angry child in the White House, and he’s throwing a tantrum, and the only thing that will make him happy is starting a war in the Middle East.

Man, are we in for it.

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Fascism thrives on fear. It wilts under scrutiny. Never look away. Never stop fighting. Hold them accountable and make them pay for every cruel thing they do. It’s the only way we get through this. Support this newsletter for just $5 a month or $50 a year and we’ll get through together.

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Saturday morning, a white, male, anti-abortion, bigoted follower of Republican Jesus who voted for Donald Trump and despised Democrats assassinated Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband. The MAGA-inspired shooter also tried to assassinate state senator John Hoffman and his wife, but only succeeded in severely injuring them. Both are expected to survive. The far-right, Alex Jones-loving domestic terrorist had a list with multiple other Democrats and had researched his victims.

The press is somehow not calling the killer a terrorist and Republicans are blaming…Democrats:

I’m giving you this context because as RFK Jr. is turning American healthcare into a death cult dedicated to killing as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time possible, the Washington Post’s Megan McArdle knows exactly who is to blame for the coming death and horror: Both sides, but really, the left. Always the fucking left.

McArdle kicks off her article by lamenting decisions made after the COVID-19 vaccine became available. After setting the mood, as it were, to make sure you’re good and annoyed at those damn progressives and their insistence on equality and equity, McArdle gets to the “Everything is the fault of the left” bit:

That 2020 committee meeting was one of many widely publicized mistakes that turned conservatives against public health authorities. It wasn’t the worst such mistake — that honor belongs to the time public health experts issued a special lockdown exemption for George Floyd protesters. And of course, President Donald Trump deserves a “worst supporting actor” award for turning on his own public health experts. But if you were a conservative convinced that “public health” was a conspiracy of elites who cared more about progressive ideology than saving lives — well, there was our crack team of vaccine experts, proudly proclaiming that they cared more about progressive ideology than saving lives.

This is one of the reasons we now have a health and human services secretary who has devoted much of his life to pushing quack anti-vaccine theories.

I need you to read that again.

“…was one of many widely publicized mistakes that turned conservatives against public health authorities.”

“President Donald Trump deserves a “worst supporting actor” award…”

Let me be more blunt than usual here. McArdle is a fucking liar. The Washington Post allowed her to lie in its filthy pages. They all know she’s lying, and they put out the lies anyway. That’s called “propaganda,” and they all deserve to be slapped across the face with a hot frying pan for what they’re trying to do here.

I know a lot of people have tried very hard to put as much of the Covid years out of their minds as possible. It was scary and a lot of people died. It’s a worldwide trauma most of us would like to forget. But I spent a good amount of the Covid years writing about what was happening and why, so I don’t have the luxury of hitting the “erase” button.

Covid shut down the country in the middle of March. I remember this vividly because the schools closed and work became remote. So I went from spending most of the day by myself to dealing with an apartment filled with people 24/7. We even had two extra kids for months as friends of ours were still working and needed someone to keep an eye on their elementary school-aged kiddos.

By the middle of April, the right was raging against lockdowns and masks and social distancing. Trump was insisting covid was no big deal and telling us the experts in his own administration didn’t know what they were talking about. By May, the right was so relentlessly hostile to the experts and people protecting themselves from a deadly virus, two little shits threatened to beat up my autistic son for wearing a mask. The only reason their father still has functioning kneecaps is because I was not there. If I had been, he would be in a wheelchair, and I would be writing this from prison.

It’s really important to understand the timeline here. Covid entered the public awareness in late January/early February 2020. The first known case was in mid-January but the public didn’t really start to understand what was coming until early March. Then the Great Panic hit and everyone freaked out in different parts of the country over the course of three weeks or so. Less than a month later, the right had pivoted to be violently opposed to anything that might prevent the spread of the virus.

McArdle’s meeting that she places so much importance on? The one that was the big fucking turning point? That really turned the public against medical experts?

That was in November of 2020.

Were mistakes made? Of course. It was a brand new disease and we didn’t know anything about it. But those mistakes came later and McArdle fucking knows it. She also fucking knows, for an absolute fact, that the GOP went to war against safety measures immediately. Not because of any “mistakes” or because of “government overreach” or whatever bullshit excuses she’ll cook up when called on her convenient omission of SEVEN FUCKING MONTHS in her fantasy timeline.

The GOP used covid as a culture war issue and killed half a million Americans in a desperate bid to keep Donald Trump in power.

This is indisputable. As in, you cannot question these facts because they’re all right there in the public record. No one was citing “mistakes” when they became violent abusive assholes over masking and social distancing. They screeched about “MUH FREEDUMB!” and how it was their right, as a ‘Murikan!, to spread disease if they wanted to and fuck you if you told them to stop killing people.

The fact that McArdle calls Trump a “supporting actor” when he was a ringleader gives the game away. He lied nonstop about the dangers of covid. He lied nonstop about ways to protect yourself from it. He suggested injecting bleach on April 23, 2020, and had been promising since February that covid would disappear like magic. He muzzled the CDC because they kept warning people about how dangerous the virus was. By early August, he was regularly attacking his own experts.

For those of you keeping track, this would be three whole fucking months before the meeting McArdle claims is a pivotal moment in the right learning to distrust medical experts.

McArdle knows this because she’s not a fucking imbecile and has access to the internet. Her editors know this because they work for a multi-million dollar NEWS organization and this is literally what they do for a living.

As I never tire of pointing out, I am just some schmuck sitting at a laptop. I have no special expertise. I do not have a photographic memory. I am not paid six figures to write in one of the (previously) most well-respected news outlets in the world with an entire staff to check my work for errors. This is not a simple misspelling or wrong date. This is the wholesale memory-holing of half of 2020 in order to absolve Donald Trump and his death cult party of their responsibility.

Now, McArdle does take a moment to mention Trump but quickly moves on from that:

That’s not to say that public health experts deserve all of the blame. They don’t even deserve most of the blame, which properly belongs to Trump, who appointed Kennedy to curry favor with Kennedy’s supporters, and to the Republican senators who confirmed Kennedy to curry favor with Trump.

This is a game the legacy press likes to play. Get the reader angry at the left. Toss in a little “Oh, Republicans have some responsibility, too,” and then go right back to savaging the left. Then they can claim they were blaming “both sides” while delivering a verdict of guilt against the side they hate the most, which is invariably the left.

This hatred of the left is easy to spot when you look for it. When RFK Jr. declared he was running against Biden, the press slobbered over him. It was unseemly but they were desperate for someone, ANYONE, to weaken Biden. They wanted their golden goose back, and they didn’t care how.

This is how the legacy press somehow failed to vet Kennedy as a candidate. Even a little.

That was, at least, until Kennedy took a hard swing to the right and started to pull more support from Trump than from Biden. Then, the press suddenly discovered that Kennedy was actually a delusional monster! The animal mutilation stuff. The pushing his wife to suicide story. The weird, creepy anti-vaxxer stance. All of that got attention from the press only near the end and when Kennedy and Trump became good buddies? Those stories went away! Sooooo fucking weird!

My personal favorite is that almost no one in the legacy press bothered to mention that Kennedy literally does not believe in germs before the election or his confirmation as HHS Secretary. He wrote it in a book in 2021. You’d think the press would have noticed that. They dug into every detail of Hillary Clinton‘s life for 50 years, but overlooked a book written just a few years ago because vetting candidates is haaaaard (when the goal is to help them hurt Democrats).

Now we have a deranged moron poised to kill hundreds of thousands of people over the next several years (the damage will persist loooong after Kennedy is gone). Who’s to blame for this? Well…not one single Democrat, not even Fetterman, voted to confirm Kennedy. He’s in a position to do enormous damage solely because of the Republican Party.

• Republican voters put Trump in power.

• Trump picked Kennedy, the least qualified and most dangerous person imaginable.

• Republicans confirmed Kennedy.

• The Trump regime allows Kennedy to do terrible things.

• Elected republicans turn a blind eye to Kennedy’s dishonesty, incompetence, and deranged conspiracy shit.

Therefore, the fault lies with the left and their damn progressive ideology. Oh, go fuck yourself sideways with a bottle of bleach, McArdle.

The legacy press does this allll the fucking time and once you see it, it’s impossible to unsee. This is why I no longer regularly read the legacy press for news. It’s so broken and biased against reality, I’m not even sure they understand what they’re doing anymore. It’s pathological. They’re fucking diseased and it’s long past time for them to be put out to pasture so news organizations willing to report the truth instead of spin can do the job for real.

The legacy media has abandoned us in favor of sucking up to oligarchs and fascism. Find voices you trust (other than me) and subscribe where you can. Independent voices like the Opinionated Ogre will be needed in the coming days, and we require your support. This newsletter is free, but for $5 a month or just $50 a year, you can keep the lights on.

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The Blue Wave has begun and the fascist fucks are scared. There are 139 days until it hits Virginia and Pennsylvania. If I were a billionaire fascist loser, I’d think REALLY hard about getting out of the way.

The U.S. Department of State raised its travel advisory for Israel to its highest level today: “Do not travel: armed conflict, terrorism and civil unrest." The move comes the same day as news reports that the U.S. has sent an “armada” of aerial tankers to Europe. As many as two dozen KC-135 Stratotankers and KC-46 Pegasuses landed at U.S. bases in Spain, Greece, Germany, Italy and Scotland, according to the Washington Post. Another report said that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had also ordered heavy lift cargo jets to bases in Europe, apparently a reference to the American C-5A, the largest cargo aircraft in U.S. inventory.

Today, Hegseth acknowledged that he had sent U.S. forces to the Middle East, without offering any specific details. “Over the weekend, I directed the deployment of additional capabilities to the United States Central Command Area of Responsibility,” Hegseth posted on X. Central Command is headquartered in Tampa, Florida, but has command over all U.S. forces in the Middle East, including American units stationed in Iraq and Kuwait, as well as U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf states of Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and a U.S. Naval base in Bahrain. Hegseth couched the U.S. military moves in terms that sound benign, but usually mask other, more sinister motives: “Protecting U.S. forces is our top priority and these deployments are intended to enhance our defensive posture in the region.” When you start hearing words like “posture” and “enhance,” something is going on at the Pentagon that they’re not talking about.

The President of the United States, however, was talking this afternoon before he departed the G-7 Summit in Alberta, Canada. As he posed with other leaders for a photograph, Trump was heard telling them, “I have to be back. There is something I have got to do.” Trump had just refused to sign a joint statement by other G-7 leaders calling on Israel and Iran to deescalate the conflict. Shortly before announcing he was leaving the summit, Trump posted on Truth Social, “Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!”

He just can’t resist telegraphing his intentions even as his Secretary of Defense is rattling sabers like ordering the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and its battle group of destroyers from the South China Sea through the Singapore Straight into the Central Command area of responsibility. The USS Carl Vinson carrier strike group is already located in the Gulf of Aden where it has been overseeing the fight with the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Great Britain announced on Saturday that it was sending fighter jets to the Middle East “as a precautionary move to protect British bases and personnel,” according to British Finance Minister Rachel Reeves. Last year during the exchange of missiles between Israel and Iran, British jets shot down Iranian drones that were flying towards Israel.

Late this evening, headlines in the New York Times and Washington Post started talking about whether Trump will make the decision to use the 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator, the largest non-nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal, against the Iranian uranium enrichment facility in Fordo, Iran. The U.S. is the only nation that has the huge bunker-buster bomb and the only aircraft that can deliver it, the B-2 bomber. Israel has long wanted the weapon and the B-2 bomber, but the U.S. has refused to supply it.

Experts say the bunker buster is the only weapon that could destroy the Iranian nuclear facility, which is buried deep underground. One report said that the only way the Fordo facility could be destroyed would be if a wave of B-2 bombers delivered one bunker buster after another, each of them dropped down the same hole made by the previous bombs.

Trump dropped another hint where this is all probably going when he posted this on Truth Social today from Canada before he left to return to the White House: “IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON.”

Meanwhile, American dependents have been flown on military aircraft out of Bahrain, where the U.S. maintains a huge naval facility, to Italy, where they were put on commercial flights to return to the U.S. The State Department had already flown staff out of U.S. embassies around the Middle East, including the ones in Iraq and Kuwait.

Even later this evening, a new statement was issued by the G-7 leaders, this time including President Trump: “We, the leaders of the G7, reiterate our commitment to peace and stability in the Middle East. In this context, we affirm that Israel has a right to defend itself. We reiterate our support for the security of Israel.”

With all the talk of aircraft carriers and tankers and cargo planes and jets being sent to the Middle East to defend American interests, I would definitely keep my eye peeled for some sort of wag-the-dog fake Iranian provocation that will be ginned up to justify the deployment of B-2 bombers to “enhance” the American “defensive posture in the region.”

Unless I miss my guess, they’re burning the midnight oil in the Situation Room in the White House as we speak. If you haven’t downloaded the Truth Social app yet, now would be a good time, because that’s The Room Where It Happens for this president.

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In a democratic society, justice must not only be done but it must be seen to be done. That principle depends on transparency, accountability, and accurate documentation of legal proceedings. At the heart of this process is court reporting, a profession often under appreciated but absolutely essential to the legal system.

Court reporters don’t just transcribe; they preserve the integrity of the judicial process. Without them, we risk losing not only records but also public trust. Here’s why accurate court reporting is vital to democracy and how it supports a fair and functioning society.

Upholding the Rule of Law

Democracy thrives on the principle that everyone is equal under the law. But that equality is impossible without a reliable system of record keeping. Court reporters ensure that every word spoken in legal proceedings is captured accurately, forming the official record that judges, attorneys, and future cases may rely on.

Inaccurate or incomplete records can compromise verdicts, mislead appeals, or even lead to miscarriages of justice. For justice to be upheld, facts must be preserved precisely, and that’s where court reporters come in.

Supporting Transparency and Public Access

Courtrooms don’t always come with cameras or public observers. In many cases, the written transcript is the only record available for review. Accurate reporting makes sure that journalists, citizens, legal scholars, and future litigants can examine exactly what happened in court.

This transparency is critical. It allows the public to hold the legal system accountable, track legal precedent, and ensure that power is exercised fairly. Professional Washington DC court reporting firms play a key role in documenting proceedings in the nation’s capital, where the stakes for justice, democracy, and constitutional clarity are especially high.

Enabling Appeals and Legal Review

When a case is appealed, the appellate court does not re-try the case; it reviews the original court record. That means transcripts produced by court reporters must not only be accurate but also comprehensive. Any gaps or errors could affect the outcome of an appeal and limit the ability of higher courts to deliver fair judgments.

This reliability is critical in a democracy, where checks and balances depend on the accuracy of information flowing between judicial levels.

Protecting the Rights of All Parties

From defendants to victims, witnesses to attorneys, everyone in a courtroom relies on fair treatment. Accurate transcription ensures that no party’s words are distorted, left out, or misunderstood. It also creates a trusted reference point in cases of dispute over what was said or agreed to during hearings.

In this way, court reporters protect individuals’ rights as much as the institutions they serve. Every transcript is a form of legal protection, proof of what transpired and a shield against misinterpretation or abuse.

Preserving Legal History and Precedent

Legal systems are built on precedent. Past rulings help guide future decisions, shape legal theory, and uphold consistency in judicial outcomes. Court reporters contribute to this continuity by maintaining an accurate historical record. This archival role ensures that future generations can learn from past rulings and that the legal system continues to evolve based on a reliable foundation.

Combating Misinformation and Misrepresentation

In the age of misinformation, having an accurate and authoritative record is more important than ever. Misunderstandings or deliberate distortions of what happened in court can erode public trust and manipulate opinion. Certified transcripts, created by experienced professionals, provide a factual anchor amid the noise, especially in high-profile or politically sensitive cases.

Court reporters are silent stewards of democracy. Their detailed, impartial transcripts make it possible for justice to be reviewed, defended and understood. In doing so, they provide a critical link between the courtroom and the public, helping uphold transparency, accountability, and trust.

As democracy faces new challenges in an era of fast information and complex legal issues, the need for reliable, professional court reporting has never been more vital. Ensuring access to skilled court reporters is not just a matter of legal procedure. It’s a matter of preserving democratic integrity.

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The post Why Accurate Court Reporting Is Vital to Democracy appeared first on DCReport.org.

There are not a lot of memorable quotations about bond markets, but one of my personal favorites is from James Carville, the chief political strategist for President Clinton, who still shows up as a talking head doing news commentary from time to time. Early in Clinton’s presidency, a particular focus was reducing budget deficits, with the belief that a lower path for future government borrowing would make US Treasury debt seem safer to investors–and thus lead to lower long-term interest rates that would stimulate the economy. For example, David Wessel and Thomas T. Vogel described the dynamic in an article for the Wall Street Journal on February 25, 1993, “Arcane World of Bonds is Guide and Beacon to a Populist President.”

The Clinton budget proposals, along with the economic “dot-com boom” of the 1990s, caused the federal budget to move from a deficit of about 4% of GDP when Clinton took office in 1993 to budget surpluses over four years from 1998 to 2001. But in early 1993, the budget legislation was still taking shape, and Clinton was being briefed on the market for federal bonds almost every morning. In the WSJ article, Wessel and Vogel quote Carville: “I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or a .400 baseball hitter. But now I want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.”

Indeed, after President Trump announced his “Liberation Day” package of tariffs back on April 2, adverse reaction from the bond markets for US Treasury debt (along with US stock markets) pushed back, causing Trump to start declaring a series of pauses and suspensions in the tariff timelines that have continued on. Moreover, Trump’s proposed federal budget strategy is the opposite of Clinton’s: that is, Clinton moved toward a balanced budget with the goal that it would also lead to reduced long-term interest rates, while Trump’s proposed tax cuts move away from a balanced budget, and he instead seems to be relying on criticizing the Federal Reserve as a way of trying to reduce interest rates.

For a primer on US bond markets, the Spring 2025 Journal of Economic Perspectives (where I work as Managing Editor) includes a symposium on the subject. As Nina Boyarchenko and Or Shachar note in the opening paper: “US fixed income markets are among the largest in the world, with $28.3 trillion in US Treasuries, $11.2 trillion in US corporate bonds, $4.2 trillion in municipal bonds, and $2 trillion in agency debt outstanding at the end of 2024.” (“Agency debt” refers to debt issued by a government-sponsored enterprise. These agencies are often (but not exclusively) related to borrowing money that buys home mortgage debt and turns it into financial securities, like the Federal National Mortgage Association, often called Fannie Mae, and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation,  often called Freddie Mac.) For comparison, the US GDP this year will be about $28 trillion.

When we talk about bond markets “intimidating” politicians, what we are actually talking about is how bondholders view the riskiness of those bonds. But who are the bondholders? Boyarchenko and Shachar offer a useful figure, showing who is likely to hold each category of bonds. They write:

Panel A focuses on US Treasuries. Since the 1970s, foreign investors have played an increasingly dominant role, with their share rising sharply in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Their holdings peaked around 2009 before gradually declining to early 2000s levels by the end of 2024. Other significant holders include pension funds and mutual funds, though their shares have remained relatively stable over time. Panel B examines corporate bonds, where insurance companies have historically been the largest holders. However, their share has steadily declined, while mutual funds and foreign investors have gained prominence, reflecting broader shifts in investment preferences. Panel C presents the major holders of mortgage securities backed by government-sponsored enterprises. Household holdings were more significant in the earlier decades, but over time, foreign investors, mutual funds, and pension funds have increased their presence in this market. Panel D shows the holders of municipal bonds. Households have consistently been the dominant investors, although mutual funds have gained market share over time. Unsurprisingly, unlike the other securities categories, foreign investors play a minimal role in this market. This is largely due to the tax advantages that municipal bonds offer to US investors, as the interest income is generally exempt from federal taxes, and in many cases, state and local taxes. Because foreign investors do not benefit from these tax exemptions, they have less incentive to hold municipal bonds compared to domestic investors. Taken together, the figure highlights the changing landscape of fixed income ownership, emphasizing how different investor groups have adjusted to economic trends and market events over time.

Boyarchenko and Shachar go into more detail on how the Federal Reserve interacts with bond market in its conduct of monetary policy. The other papers in the JEP symposium take separate looks at US Treasury debt, US corporate bonds, and the US municipal bond market. All papers in JEP are freely available, compliments of the publisher, the American Economic Association. The four papers in the bond markets symposium are:

• “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Federal Reserve Participation in Fixed Income Markets,” by Nina Boyarchenko and Or Shachar
• “How US Treasuries Can Remain the World’s Safe Haven, by Darrell Duffie
• US Corporate Bond Markets: Bigger and (Maybe) Better?” by Maureen O’Hara and Xing (Alex) Zhou
• “Why Is the Fragmented Municipal Bond Market So Costly to Investors and Issuers?” by John M. Griffin, Nicholas Hirschey, and Samuel Kruger

The post US Bond Markets: The Intimidators first appeared on Conversable Economist.

When things get wonky in the country, teachers invariably find themselves driven back to the question, "What are we supposed to do in times like these?"  How do we teach students when the atmosphere is filled with so many problematic ideas and impulses (including, it has to be noted, in their homes). 

We struggle with the question as citizens. How do we navigate contentious and toxic times? But teaching adds a whole other layer. If the work is to help students figure out to grow into their best selves and understand how to be fully human in the world--well, how does a context like the present affect the work?

When there is violence and hatred, when the discourse is soaked in bullshit and falsehood and stuff that is being spun so hard that it generates more heat than light, how does a teacher run a classroom? Stick to just the facts (whatever they are this week)? Seek to liberate students-- and does that mean teach them about tough political ideas or teach them how to read and write on their own? Media literacy? 21st century skills? Critical thinking? 

I think there's a guiding principle beyond and underneath the questions of content and methods, and as I watch one event after another (Los Angeles, Padilla, No Kings Day, Minnesota Murders) get blown up into something even worse than the badness they already embody. I watch the Dems flail about trying to come up with a strategy for "winning" while the GOP gaslights endlessly, insisting that we aren't seeing what we are plainly seeing. We are soaked in media that is designed to alarm rather than inform. The outrage machine (which is wired up to the money machine) is goosed repeatedly.

What are we missing? Certainly honesty and certainly love and concern for fellow human beings. Certainly we've seen too much of the idea that some people really are worth more than others. And the hyperbolic bullshit is massive, epic, and numbing. But underneath it all, we're suffering from a destruction of trust. Much of it has been deliberate--one of the tools of authoritarianism is to break people's trust in experts, journalism, scientists--anything and everything except whatever Dear Leader says.  

Distrust kills relationships. It short-circuits communication because if you can't trust what a person is saying, then you haven't much to go on except your own ideas about what the person is up to, Distrust leads to overreactions, which aid the cycle. You say it's raining? Since I distrust you, I'll go ahead and say it's not raining at all. Then when I go outside and get wet, I look like a fool and the folks on your team have all the more reason to trust you and not me. 

So all the navel gazing and study and vivisecting of society is great and all, but what do we do. What do we actually do?

Trust more? I suppose we could try, but putting your trust in someone who is deliberately untrustworthy is foolish. My classroom rule was always to trust students until they gave me a solid reason I couldn't. Or maybe two or three. But deciding to put our trust in people who have proven untrustworthy dozens of times-- that's just asking for trouble.

So maybe earn trust. But you can't control whether or not someone chooses to trust you, and in fact as a public school teacher, there are a lot of folks delivering the message that you can't be trusted. 

So maybe the north star has to be this-- act in a way that is deserving of trust. Honesty, integrity, respect, and a dedication to getting the material right-- those all come under the heading of principles that deserve trust in a teacher (or any other human being). They build trust in the organization, and as Edward Deming pointed out at great length, an organization powered by trust is a healthy one and an organization without trust is in trouble.

It is easy to slide into the idea that ends can justify means, and therefor if those means involve sacrificing principles and thereby making yourself less trustworthy, that's okay. But we very rarely accomplish our ends, so we end up being defined by our means. 

The thing about being trustworthy is that it allows for a broad range of beliefs and practices. But if you find that pursue particular beliefs or practices you have to using lying and manipulation, if you have to drop integrity and respect, then maybe consider that these are ends not worth pursuing. 

But more than ever, students need teachers they can trust (whether they choose to or not), and of course many (if not most) students already have a trustworthy teacher in the classroom. But as teachers are buffeted about by various claims and demands and suggestions about how to respond to the country's current messiness, and if holding onto the idea of trust as an anchor helps--well, it may not seem like much, but in the long run, it is everything.