October 6, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
By then the receipts on my desk had arranged themselves into a sort of chorus. I heard, faintly, another refrain—one from Kentucky. In the first days of the shutdown, Senator Rand Paul stood alone among Republicans and voted against his party’s stopgap, telling interviewers that the numbers “don’t add up” and that he would not sign on to another year that piles $2 trillion onto the debt.
That, I realized, is what the tariff story shares with the broader budget theater: the habit of calling a tax something else, of shifting burdens into the fog and then celebrating the silhouette as victory. Even the vote tally made the point: he was the only Republican “no,” a lonely arithmetic lesson in a crowded room.
October 6, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
Senator Rand Paul, (R. KY), who was the sole Republican to vote against a continuing resolution, seems to care about the actual finances of the government. “I would never vote for a bill that added $2 trillion in national debt,” Paul said in various interviews over the weekend.
The $2 trillion he’s referring to is the lesser of two proposals made by the national parties… and would accrue during this next fiscal year.
Oy.
We liked what Liz Wolfe at Reason wrote on Friday, so we’ll repeat it here: “One of the dirty little secrets of every shutdown is that everything remains mostly fine. Private markets could easily replace many federal functions.”
It’s a strange kind of confidence — one where Wall Street soars while Washington goes dark.
October 6, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
The Liberal Democratic Party victory has sent Japanese stocks soaring, as party President Sanae Takaichi – now set to become Japan’s first female Prime Minister – is a proponent of stimulus spending, and a China hawk. The electoral win is a vote to keep the yen carry trade alive… and well.
The “yen carry trade” is a currency trading strategy. By borrowing Japanese yen at low interest rates and investing in higher-yielding assets, investors have profited from the interest rate differential. Yen carry trades have played a huge role in global liquidity for decades.
Frankly, we’re disappointed — not because of the carry trade but because the crowd got this one so wrong!
October 3, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
Back in the Global Financial Crisis (2008), we recall mass layoffs were driving desperation.
Today, unemployment is relatively low, if climbing.
Affordability is much more of an issue. Food, rent, healthcare, and childcare are all rising faster than wages. Households aren’t jobless; they’re stretched. Job “quits” are at crisis-level lows.
In addition to the top 10% of earners, consumer spending is still strong. Not necessarily because of prosperity, but because households are taking extra shifts, hustling gigs, working late into the night, and using credit cards. The trends hold up demand but hollow out savings.
It’s the quiet form of financial repression. In an era of fiscal dominance, savers see easy returns clipped, workers stretch hours just to stay even, and wealth slips upward into assets while daily life grows harder to afford.
