The last time the US 10-year Treasury paid what it paid on Wednesday, the iPhone was a few months old and Bear Stearns was still a going concern.

On September 23, the yield on the 10-year note touched 5.12% — its highest level since 2007. The 30-year hit 5.37%. And the trigger wasn't a single headline — it was a pile of them landing on the same afternoon. Oil kept climbing. September's S&P Global manufacturing index came in at 57 when economists expected 53.6. And Fed Governor Michael Barr said out loud what the bond market already suspected: more rate hikes are needed to break sticky inflation.

So why does this matter to you?

Because a week ago, the Federal Reserve did something it hadn't done since 2023. On September 16, Chair Kevin Warsh and the committee raised rates a quarter point, to a range of 3.75% to 4.00% — unanimously, and over the loud objections of the President who appointed him. "The plain fact is that inflation is too high, and has been for very long," Warsh said. Sixteen of 18 officials now pencil in another hike this year. Traders put the odds of one at the October 27-28 meeting at roughly 70%.

Most investors are reading this as a story about the Fed. They're wrong. It's a story about the Treasury.

Here's what matters. Through August, the US government paid $1.02 trillion in interest on its debt for fiscal 2026 — the first time that bill has crossed a trillion dollars — up 9% from a year earlier. Interest is now the second-largest line in the federal budget, behind only Social Security. It already costs more than defense. And the Congressional Budget Office projects $16.2 trillion in net interest over the next decade, with the annual tab doubling to $2.1 trillion by 2036.

Think about that.

Every one of those projections was built on yields lower than the ones printed this week. Every quarter-point the Fed adds — and every tick higher in the 10-year — rolls straight into the cost of refinancing trillions in maturing debt. In other words, Washington is now borrowing money to pay the interest on the money it borrowed to pay the interest. That's not a budget. That's a treadmill that keeps speeding up.

Raising rates into a government this indebted is like dropping Mentos into a can of Diet Coke. Warsh is doing it anyway, because the alternative — letting inflation run at 3%-plus for years — is worse. He may be right. But you need to understand the consequence: the Fed and the Treasury are now pulling in opposite directions, and the bond market is the rope.

As Buffett likes to say, "Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked." The tide is going out. Companies that borrowed cheaply to build AI data centers, commercial landlords who need to refinance, and a federal government running trillion-dollar deficits at full employment — all of them just watched their cost of money reset to a level last seen before the financial crisis.

EY-Parthenon's Gregory Daco warned the next Fed hike "could increase the risk of a stock market correction." I'd go further. At 5% on a risk-free government bond, the burden of proof has shifted to every stock you own. If a business can't earn well above 5% on the capital you give it, you should ask why you're holding it.

If you own long-dated bonds, understand you're making a bet that Washington gets its spending under control. I wouldn't make that bet.

Plan accordingly.

History is replete with examples of America committing enormous sums to battles it believed it couldn’t afford to lose.

The Cold War … the space race … the war on terror … and now the race for AI supremacy.

President Trump has repeatedly declared that “whoever wins AI, wins.”

And with China racing to dominate AI too, America has a strong reason to keep pouring more and more money into the fight.

But what if winning this race comes at an enormous cost to ordinary Americans?

Here’s exactly what I’m talking about …

AI has already wiped out thousands of jobs and threatens to eliminate countless more.

At the same time, the spending on data centers, chips and power infrastructure is exploding. And the scary part is that spending is being financed with a LOT of debt.

What happens if companies are forced to borrow hundreds of billions more to finance the buildout … and the expected returns fail to materialize?

And what happens if the consequences spill out of Silicon Valley and land on the shoulders of regular Americans?

Weiss Ratings Analyst Nilus Mattive believes a dangerous chain of events is already taking shape.

One that could threaten your job, your retirement savings and your purchasing power.

But he also believes there’s a way to prepare for the fallout … and potentially emerge wealthier on the other side.

See his urgent new “American AI Apocalypse” briefing here.

The most important thing to come out of Xi Jinping's arrival in Washington wasn't the flyover or the state dinner. It was a date: January 10, 2027.

That's the new expiration of the US-China trade truce, pushed back two months from November, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed as Xi began his three-day state visit. It's the second Trump-Xi summit in under six months, and Trump went out of his way to show it — personally greeting Xi at Joint Base Andrews, the first time in 11 years a US president has met a foreign leader there.

Keep in mind what the truce actually protects. At the Busan summit on October 30, 2025, Beijing agreed to suspend its sweeping rare earth export controls for one year. That clock runs out in November. And those controls weren't a paper threat. Under the first round of restrictions, which began in April 2025, yttrium exports to the US collapsed from 333 tons to just 17 tons over eight months, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Washington has spent the time since trying to build a fire escape. Five agencies have deployed $7.3 billion, set a price floor of $110 per kilogram for neodymium-praseodymium, and signed long-term government purchase deals. Mountain Pass in California turned out 8,900 tons last year — the most in decades. It still covered only a third of what America consumes, and China still supplied 71% of US rare earth imports.

In other words, the US remains exactly as dependent on Beijing as it was a year ago. The only thing that's changed is the expiration date.

The agenda this week, per Bessent, covers trade, technology, Taiwan, and Iran — and in pre-summit talks in New York, Bessent even floated a system of AI safety notifications between the two powers. Xi arrived with Cai Qi and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, two of his most senior lieutenants, which tells you Beijing came to deal.

But most people are missing the key point. Every extension resets the leverage in China's favor. Beijing gets another ten weeks of US goodwill while it keeps the rare earth switch within arm's reach. Washington gets another ten weeks to build mines and magnet plants that take a decade to finish.

If you own companies that depend on permanent magnets — defense electronics, EV motors, wind turbines — the truce isn't safety. It's a reprieve with a date on it.

Oil traders have heard "a lot of momentum" before. They're not buying it yet.

WTI crude traded at $93.39 on Thursday, up 13% in a month and 44% in a year. Brent sits at $104.83. And that's with diplomats in the same building in New York.

On September 22 and 23, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner sat across — through Qatari, Omani, Pakistani, and Egyptian mediators — from Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. Tehran brought a road map: a 60-day regionwide ceasefire, a phased reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, an end to the US blockade, and a halt to attacks on its Arab neighbors. Iran says it could reopen the strait within seven days if Washington lifts the blockade and eases military pressure.

Trump called the talks "very productive." He also said Iran must first show "sufficient goodwill" before any sanctions relief.

Let me put this in plain English. This war started on February 28. A ceasefire came in April. A deal was signed in June and the blockade lifted — and then CENTCOM reimposed it on July 14 after renewed attacks on shipping. Every step toward peace has been followed by a step back. Meanwhile, President Masoud Pezeshkian told the world from the UN podium that Iran will keep restricting navigation through Hormuz as long as the sanctions and blockade stay in place.

One market analysis put it best: a restarted pipeline moves barrels on a known timetable, but a shipping lane that depends on three separate political concessions moves nothing until all three land. Saudi Arabia's partial restart of its East-West pipeline is the first kind. Hormuz is the second.

And one more thing... the pain is now showing up at home. With diesel at record prices squeezing farmers and truckers ahead of the midterms, Trump said Tuesday he backs a ban on US diesel exports — reportedly for 90 days. Senator John Cornyn called it "a gimmick." The American Petroleum Institute warned it would "only compound the problem." Fuel buyers from the UK to Brazil depend on American diesel. Cut them off, and global prices rise — and eventually US prices follow.

If you're waiting for peace to bring oil back to $70, I urge you not to position for it. Position for the war you have, not the one you hope for.

Copper doesn't care about press conferences. It cares about tonnage — and the tonnage isn't there.

Copper rose for a sixth straight session on Tuesday, with the London three-month contract at $14,766 a tonne and COMEX December futures at $6.83 a pound, before easing Wednesday from just shy of a record as traders digested the Fed's hawkish turn.

Here's the idea. Demand for copper is being pulled up by three forces at once — grid buildouts, AI data centers, and defense — while supply is going the other way. The International Copper Study Group reports world mine production fell 1.1% in the first half of 2026, and concentrate output dropped 2.6%. Shanghai warehouse inventories have fallen about 70% since early June, as Chinese buyers restock ahead of the holiday shutdown that begins September 25.

Think about what that means. The world's biggest copper consumer is emptying its warehouses at the same moment the world's mines are producing less. Chile, which supplies about 23% of global output, and Peru, the third-largest producer, can't simply turn a dial. A new copper mine takes the better part of 15 years to go from discovery to production.

And the miners are already feeling the leverage. Freeport-McMoRan rose 3% on Tuesday to $74.35. Southern Copper jumped 4%. That's the operating leverage producers enjoy when the metal price climbs faster than their costs.

Most investors will look at the Fed's rate hikes and assume commodities have to fall. That's true for things the world has plenty of. Copper isn't one of them. Higher rates actually make the problem worse — they raise the cost of financing the very mines the world needs.

If you don't own a position in a low-cost copper producer, I'd reconsider. This is a Lindy's Law market: the longer the shortage persists, the more likely it is to keep persisting.

Washington spent three years trying to starve China of AI chips. Beijing's response has a launch date: the first quarter of 2027.

That's when Huawei plans to ship its next-generation Ascend 960DT AI processor, the company said this month as it laid out its roadmap to challenge Nvidia inside China. Huawei says demand for its AI chips already outstrips supply. And by some estimates, Huawei alone could meet half of China's domestic AI processing demand by 2028.

So why does this matter to you?

Because it forces the most uncomfortable question in Washington tech policy. Nvidia says less than 1% of its data center revenue now comes from high-end chip sales to China. Jensen Huang's argument is that locking Nvidia out doesn't stop China — it just hands the market to Huawei and funds its research budget. Even Senate Commerce Chairman Ted Cruz conceded, "What Jensen argues is that the threat of China is greater if they have to develop their own chips, and that's not a frivolous argument."

Congress is moving the other way anyway. The Senate version of the defense authorization bill includes provisions to track exported AI chips and give lawmakers power to block advanced chip sales to adversaries like China.

Keep in mind: export controls buy time. They don't buy victory. Every year the controls stay in place, China's domestic chip industry gets another year of guaranteed customers who have nowhere else to go.

If you own the American AI trade, understand that its biggest long-term competitor isn't in Santa Clara. It's in Shenzhen — and it now has a shipping date.

Early this year, gold crossed $5,500 an ounce. Everyone who owned it felt like a genius.

On Wednesday morning, gold traded at $4,284 — down about $390 in a single month. Silver is at $65. And the people who called gold the ultimate crisis hedge are staring at a war in the Persian Gulf, triple-digit Brent, and a metal that's going the wrong way.

Most people will conclude gold has stopped working. They have it backwards.

Here's what's going on. Gold pays you nothing. When the government pays you more than 5% to hold its bonds, the cost of owning a metal that yields zero goes up. That's what happened this month. August consumer prices rose 0.4% — the biggest monthly jump in four months — pushing annual inflation to 3.4%. The Fed answered with its first hike in three years and promised another. Gold sold off hard the day the Fed moved and hasn't recovered.

But here's what that analysis misses. The Fed isn't raising rates from a position of strength. It's raising rates into a government that now spends more on interest than on its military.

Think about the math. Every hike makes the deficit bigger. A bigger deficit means more Treasury borrowing. More borrowing means higher yields — which means more interest, which means a bigger deficit. At some point, the political pressure to stop — or to have the Fed buy the debt itself — becomes overwhelming. It always has. And when that moment arrives, gold won't be at $4,284.

As J.P. Morgan put it more than a century ago: "Gold is money. Everything else is credit." Right now the market is pricing credit as if it's safe again. It isn't.

So here's what I'd do.

First, don't sell your gold into a rate-hike panic. The drop from $5,500 is a correction inside a bull market driven by debt, not by the Fed. Treat it as a gift.

Second, if you don't own any, start building a position now — in thirds, over the next few months. Harry Browne's Permanent Portfolio held 25% in gold for exactly this kind of decade. You don't need that much. But you need some.

Third, pair it with the real assets the world can't print — copper producers and energy. Each of these benefits from the same problem: governments that can't stop borrowing and a world that can't find enough supply.

I've given you the answer. Horse, meet water.

This is the Fed's preferred inflation gauge, and it lands four weeks before the October 27-28 meeting. If you see another hot number, expect the 10-year to push well past 5.12% — and expect your mortgage broker to call with bad news.

The trade truce now runs to January 10, 2027, but watch whether Beijing formally rolls its one-year rare earth suspension to match. If you hold magnet-dependent defense or EV names, a single line from China's commerce ministry can move them sharply in a single session.

The administration says it will decide quickly whether a full or partial export ban is feasible. If you own US refiners, a ban is a direct hit to their export margins — and a gift to competitors in Asia and the Middle East.

Washington wants to broker Iranian-Arab reconciliation talks in Salalah, Oman, before the month is out. If the talks happen, watch for the first concrete language on a phased Hormuz reopening. If they don't, $100 Brent becomes the floor, not the ceiling.

Every paid-up subscriber should track Huawei's supply claims into year-end. If you see China's big cloud providers publicly committing to Ascend 960DT orders, Nvidia's China business is gone for good — and the export-control debate in Washington is over.