Roundup #81: Back to our regular programming

Hi, folks! My father unfortunately passed away two weeks ago from chemotherapy complications, and as you can imagine, I’ve been busy dealing with that, so posting has been a bit light. My apologies. (I will probably write something about my father on this blog at some point in the near future.) Anyway, there’s tons of stuff happening out there in the world — far too much to fit in a single roundup post — but here are some items I hope you’ll find interesting. 1. The U.S. national debt bombThe U.S. passed a major milestone recently. The ratio of national debt to GDP passed 100% for the first time since World War 2:Source: WSJNote that there are two measures of national debt, and they have names that sound very similar. “Total public debt” is the amount owed by the Treasury, while “Federal debt held by the public” is the amount owed by the Treasury to lenders outside the U.S. federal government itself. If another government agency holds Treasury bonds, that debt counts in “Total public…