The Year Social Security Almost Ran Out of Money
In the spring of 1983, Social Security was a few months away from being unable to send out full benefit checks on time. The retirement trust fund was projected to run dry that summer. Congress and ...
Every Fed Rate Hike Cycle Since 1954, And What Followed Each One
On September 16, 2026, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates for the first time since July 2023. The vote was twelve to nothing. The new chairman says inflation is too high and has been for too lo...
How a Treasury Yield Becomes Your Mortgage Payment
If you have ever watched the Federal Reserve cut interest rates and then found that your mortgage quote went up that same week, you are not imagining things and nobody made a mistake. I wanted to w...
Where Every Dollar You Spend on Gas Actually Goes
There is a number on the sign outside every gas station, and almost nobody knows what is inside it. I have wanted to take one apart for a while. Not the national average, not a chart of prices over...
Where the Trillion Dollars of Interest on the National Debt Actually Goes
The federal government now spends more than a trillion dollars a year on interest. That number got a lot of coverage when it crossed, and almost all of the coverage stopped at the number. Nobody sp...
In 2001, Washington Was Worried About Paying Off the Debt Too Fast
Twenty-five years ago, the biggest fiscal problem in Washington was what to do with all the money. That is not hindsight snark. In January of 2001 the Congressional Budget Office published a ten-ye...
The $100 Donation File: Where Your Political Money Actually Goes
You click the green button, $100 leaves your card, and somewhere between that moment and an ad appearing on a television in a swing district, roughly sixty of those dollars get spent on something el...
How Long Did It Take America to Add Each Trillion of National Debt?
The United States government needed 205 years to borrow its first trillion dollars, crossing that line in October of 1981. It added its 38th trillion in 70 days last fall - with no war, no pandemic an...
The 10 Most Unpopular Presidents Heading Into a Midterm - And What Happened Next
With the November 2026 midterms roughly 15 weeks away and President Trump polling between 37% and 41% approval, we pulled the 10 lowest presidential approval ratings ever recorded heading into a midte...
The First U.S. Federal Budget Was Just $639,000 (1789)
We are about to watch the United States turn 250, and every July it is the same flags, fireworks, and founding-era quotes on coffee mugs. So this year I went looking for something nobody puts on a mug...
The Most Important Supreme Court Cases in US History
The Supreme Court has decided thousands of cases over its 235-year history, but a small handful genuinely changed the country. From the 1803 ruling that gave the Court its power to strike down laws, t...
15 Major Federal Projects Approved And Then Never Built
In 2026, the country is debating a 250-foot triumphal arch that President Trump wants built before the July 4 sestercentennial. The legal justification the administration is using is, of all things, a...
Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX Investments: What Are They Worth Now?
Sam Bankman-Fried is currently serving 25 years in federal prison for one of the largest financial frauds in American history. He also happened to be, by the cold math of venture capital returns, one ...
SpaceX S-1 Analysis: What's In The IPO Filing
SpaceX just filed its S-1, and the document is exactly what you'd expect from a 24-year-old company that has become the most important private business in the world: enormous, ambitious, frequently su...
The Most-Anticipated 13F of 2026: What Leopold Aschenbrenner Actually Owns
Leopold Aschenbrenner's hedge fund Situational Awareness LP posted its Q1 2026 13F to the SEC on Monday, May 18, 2026, and it was the most-watched institutional filing of the quarter. In a single thre...