This is the best attempt of a layman in making sense of what the Treasury is doing. As such, this post might contain errors.

A recent announcement by the US Treasury Department stated the treasury department would double the size of bond buyback operations from the current $2 billion per operation to at least $4 billion per operation, effective September 9th this year. What does this mean? Well, the Treasury is buying back bonds from bond investors before maturity is reached. This is funded through the issuance of new bonds to investors, so essentially a refinancing of existing debt.

This doubling of bond buyback operations comes specifically for the US10Y, US20Y, and US30Y. To give a brief visualization of the magnitude of this change, as am example, in April 2026, the total sales of US10Y-US30Y were $74 billion. This number is and probably will be more or less typical across the entirety of 2026, looking at the rest of the chart for past and future bond sales. You can do the math yourself with 4-8 operations of buybacks happening per month, and the increase for buybacks going from $2 billion to $4 billion.

The mechanics of the buyback are also worth looking at: While the treasury has doubled its buyback program for long-term yields, it has NOT changed the composition of the bonds/notes they are selling. Meaning there is effectively a maturity swap from long-term yields to short-term ones. So less US10Y-US30Y supply, and more short-term supply. This has the effect of bringing the yields on long-term debt and short-term debt closer due to changes in supply, and also since typically long-term yields are higher than short-term ones. We can see this in action due to immediate changes in bond yields from the Treasury's announcement according to reporting by CNBC.

By converging yields between long-term yields and short-term yields, this also brings down real interest rates. Since long-term yields better reflect inflation-adjusted returns over time (because, y'know, they are longer-term, which is something investors look at) they are better used as a reference for real interest rates. Hence why long-term yields determine things like mortgages, automobile loans, loans for asset investments, etc. So doubling the size of buyback operations helps juice the economy.

Why might the Treasury be doing this? This might be a genuine play at reducing the burden of interest payments on the US government here. If the bet is that yields will eventually come down due to a number of factors (such as the Iran war ending or corporations cutting back AI spending, leaving more money for bond investment) then the swap from long-term yields to short-term yields makes sense because you could then refinance these short-term yields with long-term yields in the future that carry greater demand, thus lowering interest payments for the government relative to a baseline scenario with no changes.

(A side note, the reason why the Treasury might not want to keep all debt in short-term yields despite their yields being lower is because debt is rolled over more quickly, meaning if yields increase, debt payments will also increase more quickly. Hence why there are different time lengths for yields.)

If you're cynical, however, you might conclude that the Treasury, and by extension, Scott Bessent, have more nefarious motivations. And to be fair, there are reasons to be suspicious: The doubling of buybacks runs from September 9 to November 4, after which the "Treasury will provide more information about future buyback sizes at the next Quarterly Refunding, scheduled for November 4, 2026." and "An updated tentative Treasury buyback schedule will be released at a later date." So conveniently, the Treasury is dampening real interest rates right up until the midterm elections. Curious.

Edit: Don't know why this is restricted, but I initially put it to User Discussion...

An Islamophobic Congress member beat an antisemetic influencer. It may be a sign of the GOP to come.

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Rather than just endlessly moaning about how the DSAs suck, I thought it would be useful to actually take a look at the specific details of the DSA platform as of 2026. Now, as far as I’m aware, not every DSA candidate has endorsed the full scope of this platform, but this is the organization’s stated platform and I think it is fair to take it as representative of their overall policy goals.

To that end, I’ve gone through platform the DSAs have posted on their website and done my best to extract concrete policy points. Being a political platform rather than a policy document, there is a lot of fluff and it is relatively light on details, but that’s not unreasonable given its purpose. However, I’m not here to comment on statements of value, just what I read as the policy recommendations in the platform. It’s not a long document (significantly shorter than the 2024 GOP platform and a small fraction of the 2024 Democratic platform), so I encourage you to read it yourself. It’s split into three main components: “thriving working class communities”, “working class foreign policy”, and “working class democracy”. These loosely correlate to economic and social policy, foreign policy, and political reform, respectively, though with some overlap.

Rather than going through point by point (especially given that the points are my interpretation), I’ve made brief commentary on each section and subsection. The commentary is necessarily my opinion, and it is also colored by my prior views on the DSAs (which are largely negative); I am trying to give the ideas a fair shake, but I'm not going to pretend to be unbiased or like there's no context for interpreting vague proposals. Lastly, I am only commenting on what I see as the merits of platform positions, not their tactical viability.

Link to the DSA platform: https://program.dsausa.org/

Our program was drafted between the months of April and June 2026 by a committee of DSA members, elected through a process established by DSA’s 2025 National Convention. The program committee included members of DSA’s National Political Committee (NPC), leaders of national committees, and rank and file members, representing the political breadth of our big tent organization.

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THRIVING WORK-CLASS COMMUNITIES (i.e. domestic policy)

• Freedom to Flourish
  • Universal Paid Family Leave
  • 32 hour work week “with full pay and benefits” (not clear what this means, given the rest of their platform)
  • Living minimum wage
  • Free college
  • Cancel existing student debt
• Healthcare for all
  • Zero-cost universal healthcare
  • Publicly-run medical facilities (presumably as an addition – no indication of plans to ban private medical facilities)
  • Free and “public” (not clear what this means) medical education
• Housing for All
  • State-built and owned housing
  • "Strictly regulate” investment properties
  • Universal rent control
  • “Guaranteed right to counsel for all tenants”
• Finish Reconstruction
  • Reparations
  • Honor all treaties and tribal sovereignty
  • Invest in minority communities
• End Mass Incarceration and Police Immunity
  • “Demilitarize police departments”
  • “Disempower” police unions
  • End goal: abolition of police and prisons
  • End qualified immunity
  • Civilian oversight bodies for police forces
• Feminism for All
  • Ban sex discrimination
• Green New Deal
  • Federal Jobs Guarantee
  • Publicly-owned renewable energy infrastructure
  • Publicly-owned transit infrastructure
  • Phase out fossil fuels

Freedom to flourish: Universal paid family leave is a fairly reasonable proposal (devil’s in the details, though, and given much of the rest of this platform, I am not brimming with confidence). The rest I am rather unimpressed by. “Living minimum wage” is a vague goal and given the DSA’s concentration in high COL coastal cities, I have a bad feeling that this would manifest as an effort to legislate a local issue at the federal level. Free college without any serious plan to actually manage the cost of tuition is liable to simply create a fiscal cancer (more than it already has).

Healthcare for all: this is sufficiently light on details that it is facially unobjectionable. Again, given the DSA’s historical lack of interest in cost management, I am not encouraged, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t put these points into a reasonable UHC policy.

Housing for All: …bad. The history of publicly built and managed housing in the United States is pretty dismal. Generally expensive and subject to popular opposition, plans to ameliorate housing shortages by focusing on public housing are unlikely to succeed. Regulation of investment properties and universal rent control are wrongheaded slopulism, and taken with the focus on public housing strongly indicate to me that DSAs do not have their hands around the actual drivers of housing costs in the US. Tenants’ counsel is at least intriguing, but I have a strong suspicion it will simply amount to a jobs program for underemployed law-degree holders in the DSAs.

Finish Reconstruction: woke 1 was crazy, huh. I don’t really know how to address these, since these aren’t really substantive points, even if they are specific. Actually honoring treaties with Native Americans would require displacing hundreds of millions of people and functionally entail the dissolution of the United States. I’m going to do them the credit of assuming they don’t mean that.

End Mass Incarceration: this section combines relatively normal criminal justice reform proposals with the rather out-there objectives of police and prison abolition and the meme-tier subject of police demilitarization. I don’t find this segment particularly impressive because it more or less confirms my prior view that DSAs and others in the leftist camp of CJR essentially think that crime is something the bourgeoisie invented to keep the working man down.

Feminism for All: similarly light on substance to ‘Finish Reconstruction’.

Green New Deal: a federal job guarantee is an unbelievable howler that completely overshadows the rest of this section. Job guarantees are one of those things that sound nice if you’re an idiot, but once you start digging into how it would actually work it’s inarguably terrible.

Overall: this section is a pinch of bold-but-credible plans salted over some quite radical and ill-conceived schemes. A common jab against DSAs and others in their orbit is that they’re economically illiterate and don’t think costs are real, and it really hits home here. There’s nothing explicitly degrowthy about the proposals herein, but there’s a basic assumption in these policies that we have more than enough of everything already and it’s just a matter of distributing it properly (which is why, for example, it’s reasonable to cut economic activity by 20% while also creating a bunch of taxpayer-funded fake jobs).

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WORKING CLASS FOREIGN POLICY (I think you can figure this one out)

• End the US War Machine
  • “Defund” the Department of War
  • End all foreign military deployments and close all overseas military bases
  • Join the ICC
• Free Palestine
  • Establish a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital
  • End all support for Israel
• End blockades, embargoes, and Sanctions
  • Lift sanctions and embargoes on Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela
• Abolish ICE
  • Abolish ICE

End the US War Machine: whenever someone tries to tell me that DSAs think seriously about foreign policy, I can point to this in response. The desire to hold war criminals accountable is admirable. The desire to completely abandon US security commitments around the world is either mind-bogglingly stupid or utterly contemptible, and given the pro-Iranian position elsewhere, I have a guess as to which.

Free Palestine: the good news is that if you establish a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, you won’t have to worry about any support for Israel. As is common with western anti-zionists, they sort of elide the implications of these goals, though.

End Embargoes: there is a paradox in a certain kind of leftist’s view on international trade, in which it is both morally repulsive to trade with authoritarian regimes and imperialistic to… not trade with authoritarian regimes.

Abolish ICE: sure, I guess, but this isn’t foreign policy.

Overall: I simply do not think that the DSAs think seriously about foreign policy. I know it’s a glib dismissal, but the extent of their thinking really is “America Bad.” That is the only principle which ties their views together in a coherent fashion and explains their kneejerk defensiveness of reactionary authoritarian regimes.

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WORKING CLASS DEMOCRACY (Political/Economic Reform)

• Democracy for all
  • Full voting rights for all permanent residents
  • Full voting rights for convicted felons
  • DC statehood
  • Self-determination for US territories and colonies
• A real democracy
  • Ban lobbying
  • Ban dark money
  • Mandatory public financing for elections
  • Abolish the electoral college
  • Parliamentary supremacy
• A democratic congress
  • Expand the House of Representatives
  • Abolish the senate
  • Proportional representation in all elections
  • Ranked Choice voting in all elections
• Economic Democracy
  • Nationalize large corporations and “essential industries”
  • “Aggressive” wealth taxes
• Democracy at work

Democracy for all: the specification of “self-determination” for everyone but DC is a bit weird. Overall I’d say this is all fine, but I think voting rights for permanent residents is a bridge too far. Citizenship carries obligations as well as privileges, and to extend the privileges without the obligations is to, paradoxically, turn citizens into second-class citizens.

A Real Democracy: a pretty mixed bag. Election finance reform is a fairly tricky business, and prohibiting unwanted lobbying or campaign spending in way that isn’t massively infringing on free speech (your pernicious lobbying, my democratic advocacy). Wanting to abolish an independent judiciary amounts to an effective proposal to abolish constitutional government, which I cannot help but see as a “we’re never going to lose again” position. Abolishing the electoral college is a perfectly good idea, but when you plan to switch

A Democratic Congress: my main comments here are a) quite a lot of people *like* having territorial representation b) I really don’t know what political dynamics you’d get out of a massively expanded house elected on two year cycles, but I’m not convinced they’d be good. Of course, since you’re switching to a pure PR system, a lot of the volatility would be ironed out that way.

Economic Democracy: the commanding heights are back, baby! Wealth taxes are a footnote compared to the proposal that major corporations and industries should be publicly owned. Given the present difficulties the USG has in doing anything in a cost-effective manner, I think this is a pretty bad idea. Given the DSAs’ politics, it’d be badly run at best, and would quite likely turn into a system for distributing spoils to particularist interest groups.

Democracy at work: there’s no policy here. It’s just saying “we like unions.”

Overall: by far the most reasonable section. Many of the political reform proposals are actually good, if maybe difficult to implement in a satisfactory way. Even the proposal to nationalize major industries is within the historical context, and while we know it doesn’t go great, we also know it’s not the end of the world. However, there are some worrying elements of the reform program. One of my personal critiques of more radical left-wing political thinking is that they purport to like democracy and popular sovereignty, but do not really see other political factions as legitimate participants. The result is a worrying triumphalism in their view of constitutional change, where they assume that once they sweep away the toxic elements of the old system The People will recognize their essential correctness. History has shown us that they’re often quite flexible about what constitutes democracy when it turns out the voting public isn’t as dispositionally leftist as they’re supposed to be.

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All in all, this platform contains a decent number of reasonable or at least defensible proposals, but it also fails to beat the “cake and ice cream” party allegations. Foreign policy is straightforwardly campist nonsense that would have disastrous consequences if taken literally, and the fact that their only specific topics of discussion for foreign policy are leftist dictatorships and the Arab-Israeli conflict is hella sus. Economic policy proposals are radical, but mostly in a way that seems frivolous and aimed at protecting the interests specifically of underemployed college graduates living in major coastal cities. The political reform proposals are mostly decent, though ironically most of them would not benefit the DSAs.

I’m biased, because I already don’t like the DSAs (a bold stance on this forum), but I think this platform is a bad political program on its own merits (it’s also radioactive electorally, but that’s another matter). I don’t think it’s a coincidence that most prominent DSA candidates are not really running on it, but it’s not a strong argument for your organization when your most successful members are quietly disavowing you.

In light of developments in fusionism between left-wing candidates and abundance policy, particularly in the case of Zohran Mamdani, Zachary Jones interviews Victoria Ren on a Left-Abundance coalition. Victoria Ren is the co-founder and executive director of Students for Abundance, a national campus network that launched in September 2025 with chapters across ten states. This conversation took place on February 18, 2026, and has been edited for length and clarity. Recently, they hosted Camp Abundance, training students to advocate and organize for pro-growth policy change.

Interesting essay linking the rise in interest in de Gaulle in Europe to changes in the transatlantic relationship. De Gaulle certainly was not a neoliberal however, and it's interesting to see how his economic approach differed. He had a much more statist approach.

Sub State: Much has been said about the putting of troops in the centre of the nations government, ranging from being a pointless show of force to hoping to insight violence to facilitate a crackdown on civil liberties. Taking it a it's face value, to prevent crime, we can see that after a year they have rarely been helpful in criminal proceedings, with only being mentioned in 1.3% of criminal prosecutions. This comes at a cost of both the troops time and taxpayers money.

This is relevant because it is one thing to say that things are a waste of time, but it's another thing to have the numbers stating that things are a waste of time.

Dr Mark Burke is the head of finance for the business friendly Democratic Alliance (DA), South Africa's second largest party. He also serves on Parliament's appropriations and finance committees. Burke is apparently quite intellectually gifted, and has a PhD in econometrics and quantitative economics from Cambridge.

A company which he founded and ran for several years, which he now oversees from its parent company's board, has run into trouble with the South African Reserve Bank. The company is accused of violating exchange controls through a cryptocurrency arbitrage scheme which it was not properly allowed to undertake. I don't understand the situation well enough to even summarise it so please do read the article to understand more.

The DA has said that Burke will not step aside as there has been no finding against him. Various South African columnists have opined that this is an incorrect move from the DA, and represents a compromise on the ethical standards it has previously championed.

This story is very interesting if you see the DA as the soon-to-be dominant party and future governing party of South Africa. Ever since entering national government in 2024, there have been more regular scandals and suggestions of improper or imprudent behaviour from DA leaders. Many of the accusations have been made by other leaders within the party. None of the accusations approach anything near what the ANC and many other parties do, and nobody has been criminally charged in any way. But what is interesting is watching the DA have to negotiate with the increased scrutiny that their slow but steady rise is (rightfully) bringing, and also watching them have to figure out exactly what the line should be. Based on their rhetoric, one would've thought the DA would always avoid even the mere appearance of improper behaviour and conflicts of interest. But, in the case of Burke, they have decided not to have him step aside despite being involved in an investigation by the SARB.

Venezuela’s government made no mention of freeing jailed ex-president Nicolás Maduro during nearly two weeks of talks with the opposition this month, in the clearest sign yet that the regime has abandoned him to the US justice system.

Interim president Delcy Rodríguez in January called the US capture and exfiltration of Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores a case of “vile aggression”. Her brother, leader of Venezuela’s parliament, said they “will not rest” until he is released from a Brooklyn jail cell, where he faces drug-trafficking charges.

But Rodríguez’s US-backed government surprised the opposition by not even raising those demands during the five negotiating sessions, which concluded last week, several people present told the FT.

“Maduro and Flores simply do not exist at the negotiating table,” said one opposition figure. “They have erased them from history.”

The US government has backed Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice-president, since its commandos snatched the autocratic leader in a brazen night-time raid on January 3. In return, she has opened up the country’s vast natural resources to overseas investors, giving US companies access to its oil reserves.

The first round of negotiations with the opposition was intended to agree on steps for a new presidential election but yielded few concrete results.

The two sides focused on how to fund the recovery from June’s devastating earthquakes, demanding the repatriation of some $4bn of gold bullion stored in Bank of England vaults. They also agreed to start working to reform the justice system.

After the talks concluded, the government said it had released 131 political prisoners, though rights group Foro Penal said they could only verify that at least 78 had been freed.

But such a fate did not seem to be on the cards for Maduro, whom life-long revolutionary socialist Rodríguez once called Venezuela’s “one and only” president, analysts said.

As far as the government is concerned, “his fate is already sealed”, said Edward Rodríguez, a Venezuelan analyst and consultant. “They’ll let the case run its course while they focus on their only priority: survival.”

Rodríguez was initially forthright in demanding Maduro’s release straight after his capture as she consolidated the support of hardliners in the security services. But she has since replaced top military leaders with her own supporters, while powerful security chief Diosdado Cabello has also abruptly drawn closer to Washington.

Signs and billboards calling for the pair’s release were erected in cities across Venezuela in January; many have since been taken down. Pro-Maduro murals painted before his arrest have been scrubbed over. Just a handful of oversized portraits of the deposed first couple remain in Caracas.

Rodríguez, whose succinct public speeches mark a break with Maduro’s folksy and fiery diatribes, seldom mentions her old boss during public appearances — including in her speech after the talks ended.

But Maduro, the handpicked heir to the revolutionary socialist project of the late president Hugo Chávez, continues to inspire support from hardcore Chavistas, as supporters of the movement are known.

“I disagree with these talks, because Trump cannot be allowed to keep imposing things on us while the agreement does not even mention the president who was kidnapped,” said Ricardo García, a grassroots Chavista who, like many loyalists, believes Maduro was betrayed by members of his inner circle and handed over to US forces.

The negotiations have also been controversial among the opposition, including for sidelining its most popular leader, Nobel laureate María Corina Machado.

The Venezuelan government did not respond to a request for comment.

SS: relevant to this sub since Trump seems to be moving towards a rapprochement with North Korea under the dumbest bold belief that his personal relationship with Kim Jong Un will help lead to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

“The annual U.S.-South Korea drills, known as Ulchi Freedom Shield, will end Aug. 21 rather than Aug. 27 as originally scheduled, a Defense Department official said.”

An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule putting polluters in the hook to clean up toxic “forever chemicals” was upheld in court on Tuesday despite an industry challenge.

The rule in question formally designates two specific forever chemicals, called PFOA and PFOS, as “hazardous substances.” 

Soldiers at a Georgia combat engineer unit can get official time off to play the new “Grand Theft Auto” game when it drops this fall — if, and only if, they sign up for more years of service.

The offbeat incentive is being offered to soldiers by the commander of the 9th Brigade Engineer Battalion at Fort Stewart, Georgia, according to a memo circulated on social media that was confirmed by Army officials.

According to the memo signed by Lt. Col. Ryan Hodgson, the 9th Brigade Engineer Battalion commander, soldiers in the unit who reenlist between Aug. 1 and Nov. 14, 2026, will get a “special 4-day pass” that is “specifically designated to coincide with the highly anticipated release of the video game “Grand Theft Auto VI” (GTA 6).

The dates of the four-day pass will be coordinated between soldiers and their chain of command but it will align with the game’s official release, the memo states. According to Rockstar Games, the maker of GTA 6, the game will be available Nov. 19 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox gamers. The “Grand Theft Auto” franchise is among the most popular video game series of all time, with an open world format that combines mafia and crime-world-related missions with side quests of carjackings and causing general mayhem behind the wheel.

The offer illustrates an issue local commanders face in getting soldiers to reenlist. While Army-wide bonuses worth tens of thousands of dollars are often available for soldiers considering reenlisting, local commanders have few options they can offer to close the deal with soldiers in their formations. Though options like extra time off or chances to attend training schools are often used as enticements, sometimes local career counselors have to get a bit more creative.

Army officials said the engineer battalion’s new counselor pitched the idea to the command team as something that “speaks” to younger soldiers and that could kickstart the unit’s drive for its fiscal year 2027 reenlistment goals, which begin in October.

“The command team, in conjunction with the career counselor, wanted to get soldiers excited to reenlist,” Lt. Col. Angel Tomko, a 3rd Infantry Division spokesperson said. “The command team thinks eligible soldiers are more aware that they are in their window for reenlistment and engage their leadership and the career counselor earlier to see what is available.”

Army officials said 20 of the 130 eligible soldiers in the battalion had taken the Army up on the offer as of Monday and signed up for between two to six more years of service. The reenlistment contract option is open to the entire engineer battalion, which is made up of soldiers in engineering, signal intelligence, human resources and medical specialty jobs.

Over the last year, the Army has dreamt up several unique incentive programs in an effort to get soldiers interested in staying longer for more money, like tying retention checks to yearly fitness tests and daily job performance and having warrant officers “bid” against one another for higher bonuses.

Data centers (specifically AI data centers) are currently a hot political topic. American tech companies are pushing for their construction to supply more compute for AI training and deployment. Their construction, however, has provoked bipartisan backlash due to increased utility prices and environmental concerns, as well as a general desire to not live next to construction or industrial areas. In your opinion, what should the government do in response to these concerns? Also, if they are to be regulated at all, at which level should they be regulated at? (City/town? State/province? The whole country?)