When you break it up that way, there have been several fiscally conservative congresses + good presidency combos, most notably under Clinton where they reformed welfare, increased taxes and managed to get a budget surplus one year. The formula seems to be slim Democratic Party majorities in Congress with a Democrat president.

So yes it’s rare but good governance + rising tides can make a difference.

None of these big swings between administrations had much to do with policy:

Clinton inherited the end of the Cold War and resulting “peace dividend”.

Obama inherited a Federal government already spending hundreds of billions to address the GFC.

Similarly, Biden inherited a Covid recovery budget spending an additional trillion or so.

The last pre-Covid Trump I year of 2019 had a $984B deficit. After Covid, Biden’s final full year deficit was $1.83T.

There’s a non-zero correlation between any number of policy choices by both parties and the GFC or Covid, but it’s hard to see these primarily as anything but exogenous shocks.

At the same time, it spells out the limits of seeing the world in terms of weapon effect: an American population brutalized by twenty years of occupation; Israel binding tight alliance with Saud; a resurgent heretic Shia power; a meteoric rise of China - historically far more of a foe to Islam than the West. None of these are what you might call brilliant for Bin Laden's ultimate goals.

When we fire a gun we don't know what that bullet does twenty years from now.

I can't even begin to imagine how someone says this with a straight face.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/econographics/are-risi...

> Several factors have driven the rise in bond yields, including higher inflation expectations amid elevated energy prices following the Iran war and uncertainty surrounding a new Federal Reserve Chair. But the more fundamental concern is the US fiscal position: persistently high budget deficits have reached 6 percent of GDP, while government debt now exceeds the size of the US economy.

> In Fiscal Year 2026, which ends in September, the US Treasury is expected to issue around $2 trillion of securities on a net basis. Gross issuance, meanwhile, could reach a staggering $20 trillion according to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. That gap reflects the sheer volume of debt that needs to be rolled over, much of it resulting from the Treasury’s decision under former Secretary Janet Yellen to favor shorter maturities when rates were lower and curves were upward sloping.

> US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been attentive to the resulting borrowing costs and their impact on the budget deficit, which is why the Treasury has sought to limit pressure on the US bond market from foreign central banks that need dollars. During a recent joint FX market intervention with Japan, the Treasury sold euros for yen rather than dollars, avoiding transactions that would have required selling Treasuries. It has also asked the Fed to raise the limit on its Foreign and International Monetary Authorities repo facility, allowing the Bank of Japan and other foreign central banks to borrow short-term dollars against Treasuries rather than sell them in the open market, which could put further upward pressure on yields.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-13/us-braces...

> “Investors are being asked to absorb a growing supply of government debt globally at a time when deficits remain large, inflation uncertainty persists” and the Federal Reserve is no longer a major buyer, said Michal Stanczyk, portfolio manager for the global fixed income team at Allspring Global Investments.

> “If investors continue demanding greater compensation for inflation and fiscal risks, long-term yields could move higher and away from 5% even if Treasury auctions remain well covered,” he said.

Risk premium!

The treasury announces it wants to sell $ 25B of 30Y bonds.

Then investors submit offers saying in effect how much yield they demand to buy them.

Then the treasury fills bids from the lowest yield upwards in tranches.

No, it does not. Treasury goes down the list until it has allocated the auction and then everyone gets the marginal rate. (And that's for competitive bids. You can also submit a non-competitive bid with no price–that gets filled first.)

> US paying the highest rates in 25 years means the buyers are expecting higher premiums

Would recommend looking up credit versus rates. It’s a useful construct.

> they ask them because they are worried about inflation

Nope. Do you know what TIPS are? You can compare the price of a normal Treasury and a TIP to get what Treasury buyers think about inflation. That's the breakeven-inflation rate in my top comment.

If you say you think they're wrong, I think I might agree. But the data–Treasury auction and insurance data–speak unambiguously to these points of investors' views, specicially, creditworthineness and inflation expectation.

This is literally exactly wrong. Which is pretty par for the course when someone asks you if you understand how something works in the internet.

TIPS are Treasuries. The breakeven-inflation rate is calculated entirely from Treasuries.

> data shows a path to a potential debt spiral and crisis based on yields demanded and debt outstanding

Sure. The data also–unambiguously–show that Treasury prices are not pricing in a U.S. default or runaway inflation.

Yes, one's a superpower failing to project power over a critical waterway to much international embarassment, the other is… oh.

Queen Victoria was still alive at that point and ww1 was in the future. Even after ww1 when it was obvious the empire was severely diminished the English retained outsized soft power at least and had until the 60s for the empire to be truly dismantled.