U.S. Treasury yields have

<Economic consequences of governance damage>

U.S. Treasury yields have been soaring day after day. At the same time, the dollar has been strengthening and the exchange rate of other countries, including the won, has been weakening.

However, the interest rate on US corporate bonds does not rise as much as on government bonds. Even when interest rates on government bonds rise, the spread of speculative corporate bonds is steadily falling. This is very unusual given the status of government bonds that serve as the base rate for all bonds.

In the attached photo, U.S. Treasury yields and speculative corporate bond spreads move in the same direction until mid-2023. It's a move that fits conventional wisdom.

However, speculative-grade corporate bond spreads have been on the decline alone, even as U.S. government bonds fluctuate due to a large gap between the two after mid-2023.

Some warn that there is an excessive bubble in U.S. speculative corporate bonds and that the bubble will burst soon. This is a good warning to listen to.

However, if the gap between the two is due to the chronic malaise of the U.S. fiscal rather than the easy investment sentiment of the private corporate bond market, the story is different.

What great event happened in mid-2023 that broke the stable relationship between U.S. Treasury yields and corporate bond spreads?

On August 2, 2023, international credit rating agency Fitch downgraded the U.S. sovereign credit rating to AA+ from AAA. It was the first decline in 12 years. The market flipped.

Fitch pointed to "the erosion of national governance" as the main factor behind the credit rating decline at the time. The confrontation between Republican and Democratic parties has worsened day by day, raising concerns about the sustainability of the U.S. fiscal, with debt limit negotiations always reaching a dramatic conclusion only on the brink.

If much of the recent high rise in U.S. governance and fiscal crisis is due to the U.S. governance, we should not worry about the corporate bond rating bubble theory, but turn to the normalization of U.S. politics. Businesses are strong and healthy, but maybe the government is weak and fumbling?

High interest rates and high exchange rates are also causing tremendous difficulties for our economy. Persistent inflation is one of the reasons, but it is frustrating to see that US Treasury yields rarely fall due to the turbulence of US finances and governance failures.

Correct governance is so important to the economy.


I've been saving my son

I am a scholar who studies critical theory. Critical theory is, in a word, a theory that views power critically. Critical theory is a cool and wonderful theory in the academic world, but it is known as the red theory to the far-right and the satan theory to the far-right Christians. Of course, I'm not a red person, and I'm also a devout Christian of motherhood. And I'm a slave of capitalism who loves shopping and K-pop idols who are not interested in North Korea at all.

Critical theory was learned while studying in the United States, the ultimate capitalist country. The purpose of studying critical theory is ultimately to make capitalism last longer. In order for my favorite to be able to make money freely for a long time, capitalism must work well for all of us as fandom to live well. To do that, we need philosophies that will fill the holes in capitalism like critical theory. Both "democratization of technology" and "pseudotherapy research" that I study are all based on critical theory. The reason I'm talking about critical theory is to explain the background of what I call a "woke" and "progressive" pedagogist.

How passionate would I have been to educate my son to raise him to be an awake, progressive, human rights-sensitive man. I have been discussing for 2-3 hours every day since I was a child, taking him around the world to show various societies and cultures, talking with him about current issues, taking art and creativity to classical music, ballet, musicals, Korean traditional music, museums and museums, and making a questionnaire think together why it is important to make an unbiased questionnaire, talk about historical events and religious beliefs, and make him realize the mystery and importance of nature. My husband didn't like traveling, so I took my son and daughter and educated him alone. I applied for everything except for school (which means I rarely taught him private education). School work should be done on his own.

I thought I couldn't educate my children better than this. And my son was growing up brilliantly as I had hoped.

Unbeknownst to me, however, in an instant, my son, who I educated so carefully, fell into a far-right YouTuber.

It's when my son is around the second grade of middle school. One day he starts to say these things.
"Why don't women go to the army? Women should go the same way."
"I think our society discriminates against men too much."
"Why does a man ask you to call him she? You can call him as I please. I will call a man he no matter what."
"The Ministry of Leisure should be abolished"

I can infer this person's philosophy and worldview with just a few words and a few sentences. I intuitively knew that the child was talking about values I had not taught.

"What made you think like that?"

"There's a really smart and cool person on YouTube, and that person did that."

It was Jordan Peterson.
In addition to that, there were a few far-right YouTubers.

After that, it took me months to get my son out of the ideas planted by far-right YouTubers.
Far-right ideology was more adhesive than I thought. It didn't fall off well.

The only way to get rid of them was constant discussion.
Why is the abolition of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family a loss to you as a man? Why is discrimination still severe in our society? Why do you have to call a person the way the person wants to call them? How is "femmy" and "real feminism" in our society? How real (academic and philosophical) feminism is linked to the human rights of the disabled and the human rights of children without parents. How to find out extremism. How to identify fake news. Anti-discrimination law, etc..

For months, I had a hard discussion with the child with all my heart. In order to make the child realize where and why the idea that far-right YouTubers planted in their heads was wrong, it was necessary to analyze their logic very carefully and find out where the loopholes were. I had to explain and teach countless times to see the problems of men and women not only from the perspective of individual experience but from the perspective of social structure. It was not done once and had to be discussed many times repeatedly. I had to criticize Jordan Peterson's logic and thoughts by accurately pointing out which part was wrong.

When I look at it carefully, the far-right is characterized by their own thoughts. I only see it microscopically. I don't think about what kind of social problems will arise when everyone in society thinks about this behavior. Or. He doesn't want to pay taxes because the social welfare system doesn't need him right now. However, I don't think that if the social welfare system is bad, the society my child will live in will become a dangerous society. This idea requires the ability to look at problems from a broader and longer perspective beyond human selfish needs, and it requires a lot of effort because this is against nature.  

Even for me, who studied so much, it took this long to get my child out of extreme right-wing thinking, and most parents won't even notice that he fell into this idea. Even if you know it, you won't know how to get it out. Despite having worked so hard on educating children's values for more than a decade, the child was passed on to the extreme right in just a month, and boys without this education will be brainwashed here as it is. And again, their thoughts are so sticky that they don't fall well.

In Europe, it is often heard that middle school students watch YouTube and fall into terrorist propaganda to join and join terrorists. Fortunately, there are no middle school students in Korea who join terrorists such as IS, but it seems that it has become a daily routine to be brainwashed by far-right conservative YouTubers, another terrorist group.

I'm writing because every boy in his neighborhood who is now in high school says that 100 percent of boys support Yoon Suk Yeol and follow the New Men's Solidarity, not a single one. I don't know what those high school boys know about communism