Over the past few weeks I have been talking with @emilypeck.bsky.social @axios.com about the US Treasury market. I love her Rom-com title. As @laynamosley.bsky.social says the perfect rom-com for debt nerds www.axios.com/2026/03/26/t...

Not sure about the metaphor but... The U.S. Treasury market is like a rom-com www.axios.com/2026/03/26/t...

The personalist regime. Yuck. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/u...

Looking forward to welcoming the 2026-2027 cohort of Niehaus Center fellows in July! niehaus.princeton.edu/news/2026/an...

Indeed. As if tariffs (for instance) weren't doing damage to the US economy & US consumers before February 28.

China automates while America hesitates. I have a piece in the NYT today arguing that America's strategy to compete with China in manufacturing is fundamentally misconceived — and that we're heading toward a reckoning we're not prepared for. 1/ www.nytimes.com/2026/02/24/o...

Dear students, spellcheck is no substitute for proofreading. (My favorite error, throughout a student's paper, remains "trade surpluses and defecates.")

A lot of people are looking at this as insider trading but it's an even bigger issue for national security if there was advance warning of air strikes.

👇🎯 Again, neither ___ is Evil, nor ___ does Very Bad Things, nor ___ is Maybe Still Trying to Get Nuclear Weapons are justifications for what is happening now. Lots of folks & organizations are telling on themselves by revealing preferences for 👇 as the general principle. bsky.app/profile/mcop...

When you've decided that expertise doesn't matter -- and indeed, isn't wanted -- in government, this is what you get.

Understatement alert

The notion that this is a war to "defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats" from Iran is simply fantastical. This is a straight-up preventive war a la Iraq 2003. www.cnn.com/2026/02/28/u...

Beginning to think he *actually* doesn't understand who pays tariffs. Not even who pays them in terms of pass-through, but who pays them when goods are imported... “It doesn’t make sense,” Mr. Trump said on Friday, “that Countries and Companies that took advantage of us for decades.... [1/2]

A few years ago, our local middle school changed its name. After much discussion of for whom it might be renamed, the school board decided to just go with "Princeton Middle School." Hilarity ensues.

What channel is the Bad Bunny SOTU on?

Caveat Emperor.

Not quite the regime change we've been hoping for.

Tariff tantrum, day 2.

Pritzker’s invoice to White House: (via @nbcnews.com) @govpritzker.illinois.gov

First para of the order imposing Section 122 tariffs warns that currency depreciation & balance of payments deficits "can, among other things, endanger the ability of the United States to finance its spending, erode investor confidence in the economy, and distress the financial markets." [1/2]

"Consulting historian" is a great line for one's annual faculty activities report. @jmelendezbadillo.bsky.social

Commenting on energy injustice is now the floor for any halftime act.

A story about competing footballers: Cleated Rivalry Patients comparing Dr care: Treated Rivalry Two whiskey companies vie for the top prize: Peated Rivalry A documentary about competitive Musical Chairs: Seated Rivalry Winter sweater crochet club: Heated Ravelry (end-of-day energy over here)

Two fast fashion retailers battling to capture the market for trendy trousers. Pleated Rivalry

Judge Reyes: Noem may say what she wants, but that doesn't make it true and it doesn't make her actions legal.

@jeremywallace.bsky.social notes the distributional consequences of changes in natural gas vs solar usage in Pakistan. Importing solar panels requires hard currency...but once installed, should free up hard currency (gas imports ⬇️), perhaps easing (foreign currency) debt servicing burdens?

In the @nytimesoped.bsky.social , Stacie Goddard & @abenewman.bsky.social discuss neoroyalism as a way of making sense of Trump's foreign policy. For a 4000-word discussion of their theory, see this open access #IOFoGG special issue essay: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

What are the implications of the Trump presidency for climate politics? Listen to the @goodauth.bsky.social podcast with @fgenovese.bsky.social & @jeffcolgan.bsky.social, and read their #IOFoGG short essay! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

I, too, have been reluctant to use "fascism" to describe what we are seeing, but Jonathan Rauch does an excellent job of putting all of the pieces together. Fascism it is. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Without America, "right now, you'd all be speaking German" Trump tells an audience in Switzerland.

Ice. All about ICE. “We want a piece of ice for world protection, and they won’t give it. We’ve never asked for anything else, and we could have kept that piece of land and we didn’t. So they have a choice. You can say yes and we will be very appreciative, or you can say no and we will remember.”

Tuesday.

We ran a progressive slate for the Akademikerpension board elections 10 years ago (and won), because we wanted fossil fuel divestment. I don’t think we ever imagined we might one day help trigger a margin call on U.S. Treasuries.

"Though a drop in the ocean in the context of the US Treasury market, the planned divestment by AkademikerPension marks an important symbolic step in the current political context as institutional investors rethink what constitutes a safe haven." www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

In our latest policy brief, Yingxin Angela Chen explores dispute settlement provisions in RMB-denominated sovereign bonds. Shifts in the currency of issuance haven't been accompanied by shifts in the underlying legal framework for sovereign bonds. psfl.princeton.edu/document/641

This @benbraun.bsky.social pulls together lots of recent data on who holds US government debt. (Short answer: mostly Americans). If investors dramatically raise the rates they charge to the US, the financial press might take notice. [1/2]

The (European) bondholders (still) aren't going to save us. @robinwigglesworth.ft.com pointing out that, among other things, most European-owned US assets are owned by private entities, not by governments (and, Europeans are a relatively small holder of US govt bonds anyway).

to be fair, the prize was endowed by a man who was very good at blowing things up.

Again, I’m going to keep banging the drum that the fact we are threatening the territorial sovereignty of our closest allies is not only a gross violation of our UN & NATO treaty obligations & poses a massive threat to national security & world order but also should immediately end this presidency.

The man is unhinged (and, of course, wrong), on so many levels. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

A ten (or 25) percent tariff seems a pretty cheap price for maintaining the norm of territorial integrity. (Also, this man continues to profess complete ignorance of how trade works). giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... Trump to hit Europe with 10% tariffs if it opposes Greenland takeover

"The reported criminal inquiry into Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell is an unprecedented attempt to use prosecutorial attacks to undermine [the Fed's] independence." It's a hell of a list of signatories jointstatement.substack.com/p/statement-...

Leaving aside the specific implications for debt restructuring, "national emergency" has become synonymous for "anything that the president views as interfering with what he wants." Not quite as the law intended.

I am begging Democratic leadership to recognize that funding and legitimizing your authoritarian opponent’s secret police is a bad idea. This should not be a difficult concept.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Here's a vicious attempt to destroy the rules-based international order since US funding is crucial to many of these institutions. The US wants to go it alone not realizing how much these international organizations do for us. Insanity amplified by arrogance. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

When facts (in this case, of oil production and shipping) have no meaning....

Six months ago @profmichaelross.bsky.social and I wrote in Foreign Affairs that the US is increasingly behaving like a petrostate. Seems relevant today

How can this be real life? Determining the fate of a foreign country’s government because you didn’t get a prize? The foreign policy of a personalist dictatorship.

Indeed, it can always get worse.