The diesel agreement between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will not solve the diesel shortage, considering the magnitude of the problem created by years of misguided, wrongly called “environmental policies.” Complaining about diesel prices and the US-Russia deal while eliminating domestic refining capacity and bombing refineries is just another example of bureaucratic hypocrisy.

Renewables are important, but they cannot substitute diesel, just as they have been unable to offset the importance of natural gas. Diesel is essential for every segment of the economy, from transport, manufacturing, and farming to distribution. Now, European politicians complain. However, governments cannot negotiate away years of lost refining capacity. Europe’s vulnerability is structural. Yes, war has intensified it, but policy choices helped create an energy system increasingly dependent on imported fuels, expensive infrastructure, and high taxation. Furthermore, the risk is that—as happened in the past—oil and gasoline prices may fall, and the European businesses and families will still pay much higher energy and fuel prices.

Socialist Americans are promising affordable housing through rent controls and government intervention. The evidence shows that these policies deliver the opposite.

Spain’s housing crisis is presented by socialists as proof that they must impose tougher rent controls, higher taxes on owners, tighter restrictions on investors, and broader intervention in the rental market. The evidence shows the opposite. Spain’s excessive intervention, regulation, and taxation have created a destructive combination of exploding demand, chronically insufficient construction, hostility toward private rental supply, and growing legal uncertainty for owners.

Global investors spend a great deal of time worrying about an alleged artificial intelligence bubble. However, they should pay more attention to the government debt bubble.

The most dangerous assumption is that governments can keep borrowing and making promises because central banks will always step in, disguising fiscal irresponsibility with quantitative easing programs. Many market participants hail debt accumulation and expanding government size in the economy because they believe it will create asset inflation forever. However, encouraging malinvestment and complacency is a poor long-term strategy.

Furthermore, buying government bonds does not create the wealth needed to pay for those promises. Many pension funds and Keynesian market participants are discovering that supporting constant government expansion is not profitable. The massive losses in some complacent bond portfolios show the mistake. The Bloomberg Global Aggregate Index remains significantly underwater from its early 2021 peak, sitting at an overall net decline of approximately 16% as of September 25, 2026. Smart bond investors have steered away from duration and government debt, concentrating their strategies on credit, low duration, and private debt.

In 2021, The Economist ran an entire number hailing “The Return of Big Government” as the end of the so-called—but inexistent in practice—”austerity” paradigm and the evidence that more spending and a big state was the solution to the post-covid world, delivering economic growth, social spending, and sustainability.

In 2025, the same publication ran a number called “The Coming Debt Crisis“

The outcome of the return of big government was the return of persistent inflation, stagnation, and unsustainable debt. Who would have guessed it? Anyone doing the numbers and everyone who understands that government stimulus and so-called public spending multiplier effects are simply myths of statism.