Adapting to Higher Yields

Posted on July 24, 2026 by MN Gordon

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, recently said he wouldn’t buy long-term U.S. Treasuries. His rationale is simple, he “doesn’t understand the upside.”

Here at the Economic Prism, we don’t understand the upside either. But, unlike Dimon, we’re not running the largest primary dealer of U.S. Treasuries on Earth.

Primary dealers, remember, are the elite financial institutions obligated to participate in U.S. Treasury auctions. Their purpose is to help grease the wheels of Uncle Sam’s multi-trillion-dollar borrowing machine. Yet Dimon, the chief architect of that machine’s biggest partner, just publicly bashed the product.

So, what does Dimon actually mean? Why would the ultimate financial insider pass on what has long been purported to be the world’s safest asset?

To understand why Dimon “doesn’t see the upside,” we need to start with the single most fundamental rule of fixed income. When yields go up, bond prices go down.

Imagine you buy a 10-year U.S. Treasury bond today with a face value of $1,000 paying a fixed 4.5 percent annual interest rate. You’re locked into receiving $45 a year for the next decade. Continue reading →

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How Demographics are Driving America’s Long-Term Fiscal Illness

Posted on July 17, 2026 by MN Gordon

If it’s not a bizarre new geopolitical crisis, it’s a terrifying headline about the safety of our food supply.

This, no doubt, is an age of constant, low-grade dread. Every time you open your phone, there’s a fresh, steaming pile of bad news waiting to greet you.

But while the mainstream media loves to keep your anxiety levels on a gentle simmer, we prefer to look at the bigger picture. The absurdity of modern life is what we’re after.

Lately, two seemingly unrelated outbreaks have been competing for the spotlight. There’s a microscopic parasite making its way through America’s salad bowls. A healthy lunch has suddenly turned into poison.

At the same time, there’s a massive, systemic failure quietly brewing in Washington. One that’s growing so rapidly it makes a stomach bug look like a walk in the park. While one threatens to disrupt your digestive tract for a week, the other quietly promises to derail the economic security of several generations.

In truth, both of these crises suffer from the exact same fundamental problem. A complete failure of basic hygiene. Whether we’re talking about food safety or fiscal responsibility, ignoring the fundamentals eventually catches up to you. And when it does, the results are always messy, painful, and incredibly hard to clean up. Continue reading →

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Why the Era of Cheap Money is Dead

Posted on July 10, 2026 by MN Gordon

Most Americans, and people across the planet, have been trained by a financial system where borrowing costs became perpetually cheaper. If you got into a pinch, you could refinance your mortgage, with more agreeable terms, and quickly increase your cash flow.

You could also pull out some equity and upgrade your kitchen, pay off your credit cards, take a vacation, or play in the stock market. What a delight.

If you took out a mortgage, expanded a business, or looked at a government balance sheet anytime between the Reagan administration and the dawn of the 2020s, the wind was firmly at your back. Biting off more than you could chew was often rewarded.

But credit cycles operate in massive, multi-decade tides. Their movements are broad and sweeping. And right now, after four decades, the tide is rushing out. The tranquil waters of easy liquidity have turned into a harsh and turbulent macroeconomic sea.

Perhaps you’ve noticed your credit card rates creeping up. Or you’ve looked into a car loan to finance a new vehicle purchase. If so, you’ve seen the painful reality of higher borrowing costs. At the same time, your bond portfolio’s taken a hit. Losses in what was supposed to be the safest corner of your nest egg were not supposed to happen. Continue reading →

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Sparklers and Sorrow

Posted on July 3, 2026 by MN Gordon

As the night falls we shed a tear
Watching all our freedoms disappear
And we said goodbye to the way things were

– Mike Ness, The Way Things Were

Looking Backwards

The United States 250th anniversary should be the party of the century. There should be Main Street parades stretching from Maine to California, fireworks lighting up the night sky with unrestrained joy, and a collective, roaring cheer for the greatest experiment in human liberty ever devised.

But let’s be real. If you tune out the fabricated hype and look around your own community, does it feel like a celebration? Or does it feel a little more like a wake?

For many Americans this milestone doesn’t feel like a triumphant birthday party. It feels like a long, bittersweet goodbye to a past that was genuinely great. An era of care-free innocence, rugged self-reliance, and broad freedom that has been steadily chipped away, piece by piece, by the creeping hand of big government, digital surveillance, suffocating regulation, and crushing taxes.

Instead of looking forward to the next 250 years with the fierce optimism of our ancestors, many Americans are looking backward, grieving the loss of a country we thought we knew. Continue reading →

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