Friday, October 16, 2026 breadandcircuses.xyz
A personal blog. Notes, newsletters, and other public amusements.
Warsh said nothing on rates in Bangkok, and October hike odds fell to about 13–15% from about 28%, while the ten-year closed at 5.10%, its lowest close since September 22. Wednesday's spreads showed the stress: CCC at 12.82% and high yield at 325, the widest since March. The roughly $5B Volta AI loan priced wide, at SOFR+650 and 95 cents on the dollar.
Producer prices posted their biggest jump since 2022, yet Treasuries rallied anyway, pulling the ten-year back to about 5.07% after it went above 5.3% on Wednesday's CPI. We cover the PPI details, the Beige Book, CoreWeave's bonds falling to distressed levels as the AI trade's weak link, plus banks, AI finance and a speculative stop with Arthur Hayes.
September's core CPI ran a tenth hot, and the miss was broad-based. October hike odds jump to about a coin flip, a day after Williams said maybe one more. Plus the new pain point in Treasuries, Volta's deadline, the annuity money in private credit, and bank earnings.
Same AI boom, two Fed diagnoses: Waller calls it real growth, Goolsbee says it's jumping out of its lane. Plus Hammack vs. Warsh on saying less, BlackRock moves to the front end, the private-vs-public BDC price gap, and CPI tomorrow.
You can’t build a house without nails and wood. If you don’t want a house built, hide the nails and wood. If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy. Any man who can take a TV wall apart and put it back together again, and most men can, nowadays, is happier than any man who tries to slide rule, measure, and equate the universe, which just won’t be measured or equated without making man feel bestial and lonely. I know, I’ve tried it; to hell with it. So bring on your clubs and parties, your acrobats and magicians, your daredevils, jet cars, motorcycle helicopters, your sex and heroin, more of everything to do with automatic reflex. If the drama is bad, if the film says nothing, if the play is hollow, sting me with the Theremin, loudly. I’ll think I’m responding to the play, when it’s only a tactile reaction to vibration. But I don’t care. I just like solid entertainment.
Captain Beatty, in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451