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As someone with a 401(k), I tend to prefer it when financial news doesn’t reference the 2008 financial crisis. Unfortunately, that was not to be on Tuesday: the US bond market is having a tough go of things right now, and the 30-year Treasury yield just hit a 19-year high last reached in June 2007. Other countries, including Japan, Germany, and France, also hit multi-year highs.

So what does that all mean? It sounds technical, but bond yields underlie the cost of borrowing for just about anything, from mortgages to car loans. Essentially, they’re the rate the government pays to borrow money on different time horizons (10-year Treasury notes or 30-year bonds, for example, often just called Treasuries). When investors sell government bonds, the price falls, and bond yields go up. A combination of weak demand and heavy supply right now means the problem is particularly acute.

The current shakiness in bond markets reflects the broader set of problems facing the US and global economies right now: The Iran war is dragging on with no end in sight after the US and Iran blew through a 60-day deadline to reach a more permanent peace deal yesterday, inflation is still a problem, and the national debt in the US and elsewhere is rising. Huge volumes of corporate borrowing for AI data centers in the US also play a role.

A deepening debt problem

Here’s an uncomfortable problem: Part of the reason for climbing US bond yields is investors feeling antsy about the national debt. But the higher those yields go, the more it costs the government to service that debt, and the more quickly it’s going to accrue. And the US has a milestone approaching: $40 trillion. 

It’s expected to reach that mark sometime this week, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday, months sooner than expected. Shortly after that — sometime early in 2027 — the US could once again be staring down the debt ceiling, which Congress will have to raise (it previously acted last year to raise it by $5 trillion, to $41.1 trillion total). 

Whenever that rolls around, it’s likely to be a major political fight, especially if Democrats win back one or both chambers of Congress this fall (unless Republicans do so this fall, as Trump has urged). 

But as my former colleague Dylan Matthews wrote in 2024 (when the national debt was merely $35 trillion or so), there are very good reasons to address the growing national debt beyond the political: Not only can it weigh on the overall economy over time, but if things get really serious, it can also spiral into a debt crisis. It’s never happened in the US before, which has some things going for it that make such a crisis far less likely than in other countries. As Dylan pointed out some $5 trillion ago, though, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

One link for later

➨ Environmental law at risk. Trump is asking the Supreme Court to clear the way for construction to continue on his East Wing ballroom/“Military Complex,” which has been blocked by lower courts. But the case goes much further than that: As my colleague Ian Millhiser explains, if justices rule in Trump’s favor, “numerous environmental, conservationist, and historical preservation laws could effectively cease to function.”

Before you go…

• Did you know…that most pet hamsters are Syrian hamsters, native to the northern part of the country? It’s just one of many great details in this nuanced piece from my colleague Kenny Torrella, about the complicated story of Mollie, the hamster uploading his runs to Strava.
• Today’s trivia: Which Dutch astronomer theorized a cloud that constantly creates comets? (You can find this and other brain puzzles in Vox’s daily crossword. Look for the answer in tomorrow’s edition.)
• Yesterday’s trivia: Yesterday, we asked you for the title of Iran’s ruler before the 1979 revolution. That was the shah; Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was the last to hold the title.

Cedric Lodge, 58, sentenced in December to eight years in prison for stealing and selling body parts in national scheme

Harvard University has agreed to pay a $53m settlement to resolve civil lawsuits stemming from the illegal theft and sale of human remains that had been donated to its medical school for scientific research.

A former Harvard medical school morgue manager, Cedric Lodge, 58, was sentenced in December last year to eight years in prison after he had pleaded guilty in May to stealing and selling human body parts in a nationwide scheme. Prosecutors said this had involved the theft and sale of organs, skin, brains and dissected heads from cadavers donated to Harvard from 2018 through at least March 2020.

Итан Сигел (американский астрофизик-теоретик и научный журналист, автор рубрики "Спросите Итана", один из пропагандистов современных научных знаний), недавно опубликовал статью об истории открытий, которые и привели нас к преобладающему сегодня взгляду на Вселенную (возникшую в Большом взрыве и расширяющуюся с ускорением).

200 лет назад мы почти ничего не знали о нашей Вселенной в космических масштабах. Сегодня мы знаем очень многое, и обнаружили немало загадок, непонятных явлений с неясной природой. @avshkol перевёл этот шикарный исторический экскурс, который даёт общее представление о 20 открытиях в астрономии и физике, по одному на каждое десятилетие, перевернувших наше понимание природы, космоса, Вселенной. Статья будет интересна всем, кто интересуется астрономией, астрофизикой, а также историей развития наших взглядов на Вселенную и формирования преобладающей сейчас теории Вселенной.

Prime minister urges local leaders to act as homelessness campaigners welcome move but say more needs to be done

• I won’t abandon anyone to sleep rough on our streets. That’s my £442m promise

Andy Burnham has urged local leaders to offer all rough sleepers in England a route off the streets by Christmas, as he pledges another £100m to end street homelessness.

Arguing in the Guardian that rough sleeping has become so common it now “feels like part of the scenery”, Burnham promised he would mount a Covid-style campaign to get everyone off the streets this winter.

Fifteen fire engines tackling blaze at Landmann Way in Deptford involving 50 tonnes of household waste

About 100 firefighters are dealing with a fire that has broken out at a waste facility in London for the second time this summer.

Fifteen fire engines are at the incident in Deptford, south-east London, which involves about 50 tonnes of stored household waste.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation sued to block the ballroom, arguing that the president lacks authority to erect new buildings on government property.

ИИ меняет экономику маркетинга. Работа, на которую уходили рабочие часы команды и подрядчиков, теперь делается за часы. Отсюда возникает соблазн: смотреть на маркетинг как на список затрат и резать, резать, резать … людей, инструменты, исследования, контент.

Но маркетинг это связанная система. Что-то в ней можно убрать без последствий, а что-то кажется лишним ровно до того момента, пока не начинают падать качество решений, знание клиента и рост. Правильный вопрос это не «что заменить на ИИ?», а «что можно удешевить, не разрушив систему?».

A man, woman and teenage girl have died, while a younger girl is in a critical condition, say Sussex police

A couple and their teenage daughter have died after getting into difficulty in the sea off the West Sussex coast, police said on Tuesday.

A man, a woman and a teenage girl died after the incident in Shoreham-by-Sea, the chief superintendent of Sussex police, James Collis, said.

Amid race with Anthropic, firm plans to overhaul research and training and require more safety parameters after hack

OpenAI on ⁠Tuesday said it had slowed down the ⁠pace of ⁠its ​AI development while it overhauled its ⁠research and training systems.

The company’s researchers were ⁠caught unaware last month ​when an ‌AI agent ‌under testing hacked another AI ‌firm, Hugging Face.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted conditional approval for the Trump family's World Liberty Trust Co. to become a bank handling cryptocurrency and digital assets.

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‘Collapsing confidence’ in housing market, Wilson says

Tim Wilson has jumped on that reporting around rent increases and says there has been a collapse in confidence since the budget which is hurting renters.

We’ve had, since the budget, collapsing confidence, a lack of will to invest in housing that is going to be available for rentals.

We’re seeing a complete disaster in the housing market, and we know that’s only going to do one thing while the government continues to overshoot its migration target, and that is an increase in rents on Australians struggling to save a first home deposit.

There is an awful lot that goes into determining rents in Australia, and the thing that Treasury modelled in the context of the budget, what is the isolated effect of what the government actually changed about the housing market. And if I just step back for a second, we’ve got a broken housing system in our country, and it’s the renters of Australia who are bearing the brunt of really 40 years of government’s not doing enough about this problem.

I think that Clare sadly needs to start taking a bit of responsibility for her housing policy. But also, Clare, stop gaslighting Australians, stop gaslighting the mum and dads who are currently watching this show and feeling the impact of your toxic housing taxes … She can sit on your show and defend her policies, but the evidence on the ground, the evidence from the experts, is that Labor’s toxic housing taxes are smashing the market.

Tributes paid to ‘great friend and collaborator’ who played with band for 56 years and died in hospice care in Texas

The ZZ Top drummer Frank Beard has died at the age of 77.

A spokesperson for the band confirmed that Beard died on 17 August in hospice care at his ranch in Richmond, Texas. His family were by his side.