Gloomy Americans.
How annoying is the annoyance economy?
“There are a bunch of newsletters out there I have read. News Items is the one I want to read.” — Jane Metcalfe, Chair of the Board of Directors, Human Immunome Project, co-founder Wired magazine and Wired Ventures.
1. Gallup:
The percentage of U.S. adults who anticipate high-quality lives in five years declined to 59.2% in 2025, the lowest level since measurement began nearly two decades ago. Since 2020, future life ratings have fallen a total of 9.1 percentage points, projecting to an estimated 24.5 million fewer people who are optimistic about the future now versus then. Most of that decline occurred between 2021 and 2023, but the ratings dropped 3.5 points between 2024 and 2025. (Source: news.gallup.com)
2. The first four months of fiscal year 2026 got off to an expensive start for the U.S., according to the latest estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) . The CBO released a report Monday detailing that, for the first third of FY26 (which began in October), the U.S. government operated at a deficit, and so borrowed $696 billion. That included $94 billion in January alone, and works out to an average of $43.5 billion for each of the 16 weeks of the four months since.
While America’s government spending outweighs its revenue generation, its finances are also negatively compounded by the interest payments needed to maintain its debt. Total national debt now sits at more than $38.5 trillion. U.S. GDP is about $31 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. (Sources: fortune.com, cbo.gov, fred.stlouisfed.org)
3. China sold yuan-denominated sovereign bonds in Hong Kong at the lowest yields in more than a decade, signaling stronger demand for its debt and offering support to Beijing’s push to expand its currency’s global use. Beijing sold 14 billion yuan ($2 billion) of debt in its first Hong Kong auction of the year and the offering was oversubscribed 3.94 times, the Ministry of Finance said on Wednesday. Yields were offered at the lowest since at least 2013 for two, three and five-year notes, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. (Source: bloomberg.com)
