Source: EconLog
by Valentin Boboc

“An ordinary person can earn a paycheque, pay her taxes, cover living costs and mortgage payments, and perhaps even add to her savings — and at the end of the day she will still owe most of her mortgage. This is a normal state of affairs, and nobody finds it puzzling. Yet when a company reports profits alongside large amounts of debt, the reaction is often to question whether it’s really making money. After all, if a company is ‘truly’ profitable, why is it in debt? The short answer is that debt is not the opposite of profit. Loss is the opposite of profit. This imagined contradiction is easier to resolve once we recognize that profit is a flow and debt is a stock.” (10/07/26)

https://www.econlib.org/econlog/debt-and-profit

Source: Reason
by Jacob Sullum

“After Tennessee unsuccessfully tried to execute Christa Pike last week, an ambulance whisked her to a Nashville hospital, where the condemned murderer became a patient in urgent need of lifesaving care. Should Pike recover from two botched administrations of pentobarbital, which left her unconscious and unable to breathe on her own, she might travel that road in reverse after she is well enough to be killed. That bizarre episode illustrates the perverse consequences of trying to disguise the brutal reality of capital punishment by dressing it in medical garb. Although most Americans say murderers like Pike should be executed, the method they prefer suggests they are squeamish about admitting what that entails.” (10/07/26)

https://reason.com/2026/10/07/prettifying-executions-does-not-make-them-quicker-or-more-reliable/

Source: The American Conservative
by Jude Russo

“It turns out that Americans loathe inflation, which is pretty amusing for someone who spends a lot of time writing about parts of the world where a 20 percent inflation rate barely warrants comment. They delivered unified government to the Republicans in 2024 on inflation, and they seem primed to throw them out of Congress this year on the same grounds. (Although the residual classical monetarist in me would like to distinguish between supply shocks and inflation simpliciter.) At the same time, the Trump administration has an ambitious if not always coherent program that needs to be paid for and that only minimally involves the legislature’s oversight. … Something’s gotta give here. Either the American people will have to make their political peace with running the economy hot and the consequent inflation, or real austerity will come and wash all this spending off the streets. A debt crisis could force the issue.” (10/07/26)

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-coming-age-of-austerity/

Source: Town Hall
by Vijay Jayaraj

“Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel took aim at BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell and the American Petroleum Institute, hauling them into federal court on antitrust charges. The theory was breathtaking in scope. She accused them of stealing the future. Nessel’s complaint claimed that the companies had colluded, in violation of federal antitrust law, to hold back wind, solar, and electric vehicles and that Michigan families had paid inflated energy bills as a result. Judge Jane M. Beckering of the U.S. Western District Court in Michigan dismissed the complaint, holding that the state lacked standing to pursue the claim at all. That was only the beginning of the court’s skepticism. As reported, Judge Beckering found that the alleged chain connecting a decades-long conspiracy to the state’s claimed overcharges stretched too thin to support most of the injuries Michigan tried to claim.” (10/07/26)

https://townhall.com/columnists/vijayjayaraj/2026/10/07/climate-lawfare-cannot-rewrite-energy-history-n2684227