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Japan’s government debt remains above 200% of GDP, and rising yields dramatically change the arithmetic. When rates were near zero, Tokyo could carry an enormous debt load because servicing costs remained artificially suppressed.
Once yields rise, refinancing becomes progressively more expensive. The government then must issue still more debt to cover interest expenses, cut spending, raise taxes, or find new buyers willing to finance the entire operation.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is now pressuring Japan to rein in government spending and restore credibility with the bond market as Japanese yields surge.
Japan’s 10-year government bond yield has climbed above 3%, reaching levels not seen since 1996, as investors increasingly demand greater compensation to finance one of the most indebted governments in the world.
This is the great misconception surrounding the Federal Reserve. No Fed chairman controls the business cycle. Warsh can raise or lower the overnight rate, but he cannot simply decree that the 10-year Treasury should yield 3% if investors around the world demand 5%.
The long end of the curve reflects inflation expectations, sovereign risk, competing investment opportunities, debt supply, and international capital flows.
People constantly ask who has more power over interest rates, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent or Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh.
Warsh certainly has the more visible lever because the Federal Reserve controls the federal funds target and can influence short-term liquidity throughout the banking system. Bessent, however, sits at the Treasury where the government must actually finance the deficits Congress creates. Congress spends the money, the Treasury must borrow it, and the Fed attempts to influence the price of money, but NONE of them ultimately control global capital.
Estonian Defense Minister Martin Herem said Estonia is capable of fighting Russia on its own and warned that any Russian forces crossing the border would be met with destruction.
“We will destroy Russian infrastructure,” Herem said, adding that Estonia would strike Russian forces and infrastructure across the border if necessary, naming Ivangorod and Pechory as possible targets.
He also said Russia should break up into numerous independent states, while warning that any attempt to attack Estonia from a distance would be “blown to smithereens.”
Ukraine has dark-money PACS targeting anyone they view as against perpetual war. They are now targeting Anna Paulina Luna since she voted against the Russia Sanctions bill. Just like Israel, which interferes so in our elections and poured a ton of money to defeat Massie, Ukraine is doing that to Luna.
They have now begun a new cycle and it looks no different from any other of these failed endless wars, except it will become more widespread over time if Netanyahu is reelected.
It was Sikorski who publicly said: “The Polish-American alliance is worthless. It is even harmful because it creates a false sense of security for Poland.” He has frequently spoken about modern Russian aggression mentioning a Russian missile falling 10 km from his home in 2024.
Britain recorded more than 41,000 people crossing the English Channel in small boats during 2025, although crossings so far this year are reportedly down more than 40% compared with the same period last year.
The government is trying to move asylum seekers out of expensive hotels and into alternative accommodations, but simply transferring thousands of people into military facilities does not eliminate the political problem. It merely moves the burden from one community to another.
Political fragmentation does not start with governments disappearing overnight or borders suddenly being redrawn. It begins when people stop believing that the central government represents their interests. I have explained for years that separatist movements are driven by economics and declining confidence in centralized authority.
The timing could not be more remarkable. Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have just seen their nationalist leaders gather in Cardiff and declare that “Westminster’s time is coming to an end.”
The 2026 Duma election is taking place under circumstances that did not exist during the 2021 Duma election. Ukrainian drones have increasingly attacked refineries, logistics facilities, and other targets inside Russia.
The liberal Yabloko party, which opposed the war, the Russian Supreme Court removed from the nationwide party-list contest. Individual Yabloko candidates can still contest some single-member constituencies. Zelensky knows this, so his attacks inside Russia have intensified all the more to ensure that the war continues, supporting the hawks – not the anti-war crowd.
How the upcoming Duma election works:
The State Duma contains 450 deputies. Russia uses a mixed electoral system: 225 seats are elected from single-member constituencies, while another 225 are distributed through the nationwide party-list vote.
United Russia currently has a very large parliamentary majority. It has 310 seats and needs at least 300 seats to retain the two-thirds supermajority necessary to approve constitutional amendments without support from other parties.
This is why Zelensky is not merely seeking to influence the election with his attacks, but is already claiming that the Russians in the Donbas should not be allowed to vote and that this should be rejected by the international community.
Russia is holding elections for the ninth State Duma from September 18–20, 2026, making this the first national parliamentary election since the West Neocons instigated this war against Russia through Ukraine as their proxy, forcing Putin to come to the Russians’ rescue in the Donbas in February 2022.
The separatist and sovereignty movements spreading across Europe are directly connected to this debate. People are increasingly questioning political structures because decisions affecting their daily lives are being pushed farther away from them. Migration merely makes the problem visible because nothing demonstrates the meaning of sovereignty more clearly than control over territory and borders.
Von der Leyen is correct about one fundamental point: Europe must be capable of protecting its external borders. No functioning political system can survive indefinitely without knowing who is entering, determining who has a legal right to remain, and removing those who do not. The dispute is over who should exercise that authority and whether another emergency framework in Brussels actually restores control to nations or simply transfers even more authority upward.
What makes this even more remarkable is that the EU’s new Pact on Migration and Asylum only became fully applicable on June 12, 2026. Brussels called it a comprehensive solution that would finally provide secure external borders, faster asylum procedures, better returns, and a permanent solidarity system among member states. Barely three months later, von der Leyen is already saying Europe’s tools must “evolve” because the existing system is inadequate for emergencies.
🌍 Speaking on the State of the Union, Ursula von der Leyen said irregular migration has fallen across Europe but framed the crisis in Ceuta as a test of the EU’s ability to respond, calling the Spanish enclave a European border.
The message shifts responsibility from a national border to a shared European one. That matters because migration pressure often exposes the gap between EU-level promises and the authority, funding and operational capacity available on the ground.
Calling for the bloc’s tools to “evolve” could mean faster coordination during sudden surges, clearer support for frontline states and stronger crisis-management mechanisms. The difficult question is how to improve control without deepening disputes over asylum and responsibility-sharing.
The era of permanently cheap money was NEVER sustainable because government abused it more than anyone. Politicians accumulated mountains of debt believing rates could remain artificially suppressed forever, and now they are discovering that they cannot dictate the price at which the world will finance their spending. The Fed can move its overnight rate, but it cannot command global capital, and that distinction will become increasingly painful as the cost of servicing government debt continues to rise.