💳 America’s Maxed Out

Don't wait. Sign up for The Hustle to unlock our side hustle database. Unlike generic "start a blog" advice, we've curated 100 actual business ideas with real earning potential, startup costs, and time requirements. Join 1.5M professionals getting smarter about business daily and launch your next money-making venture.

Get the guide

America just spent $2 trillion it didn't have.

That works out to roughly $60,000 every single second. For a full year.

The fiscal year closed on Sept. 30, and the Congressional Budget Office just tallied it up. The federal deficit hit nearly $2 trillion.

Shrink that down to a household and it's someone earning $54k and spending $74k. And spending is growing twice as fast as income.

Deficits this big usually only show up during deep recessions or wars. The US currently has neither. That's the bit making investors sweat.

Here's the stat that should stop you mid-scroll: the US now spends more on interest than on its entire military.

Interest payments beat every spending category except Social Security. Uncle Sam is basically paying a credit card bill bigger than the Pentagon.

And the hole keeps getting deeper:

Have there been cuts? Sure. DOGE slashed the federal workforce, clean-energy credits got trimmed, healthcare subsidies expired and food stamp rules got stricter.

All of it is pennies in the bucket. The real elephants are entitlement reform and higher taxes.

Republicans and Democrats finally agree on something: not touching either one.

When a borrower keeps borrowing more, lenders want a bigger reward. That's showing up in yields.

PIMCO now warns the 10-year Treasury yield could hit 6%, a level not seen since 2000. Back when people were still recovering from Y2K panic.

Europe is having its own debt wobble too, so this is a global mood.

So how does a country climb out of a $40 trillion hole? If tax and spending stay put, there are two exits:

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is betting on door number one. "We don't have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem," he said last month, arguing 3% growth plus spending restraint gets the job done.

The catch? Inflation has run hot every year since the pandemic. Door number two keeps creaking open on its own.

Deficits are boring right up until they show up on your mortgage statement.

Ready to transform artificial intelligence from a buzzword into your personal revenue generator

HubSpot’s groundbreaking guide "200+ AI-Powered Income Ideas" is your gateway to financial innovation in the digital age.

Inside you'll discover:

Download your guide today and unlock a future where artificial intelligence powers your success. Your next income stream is waiting.

Get Your Guide

SpaceX just dropped $8 billion on airwaves.

And telecom investors immediately reached for the panic button.

SpaceX $SPCX ( ▲ 1.25% ) is buying a nationwide low-band spectrum portfolio from Grain Management for $8 billion.

Low-band spectrum is the signal that travels far and pushes through walls. It's the prime real estate of mobile coverage.

Pair that with the Starlink Mobile announcement, and the message to the big carriers was pretty clear.

The rocket company wants a seat at the phone company table.

Telecom stocks sold off fast.

T-Mobile $TMUS ( ▼ 13.27% ) fell roughly 6% after hours. That's the market watching a new competitor walk in and deciding to ask questions later.

The fear is simple: a company that already owns a chunk of the sky now wants a slice of the ground signal too.

Quant ratings take a calmer view of the sector.

T-Mobile is still rated a Buy, selloff and all.

Here's the top of the leaderboard:

Spot the pattern? Most of the top-rated names are regional or international players.

Meanwhile, the US heavyweights are sitting firmly on the fence:

Verizon and AT&T: the two biggest names in American telecom, both rated "meh." 🫠

Sector-wide selloffs tend to sell first and sort later. Strong and weak names get dumped in the same bin.

The quant data suggests the market's knee-jerk reaction and the underlying numbers don't always line up.

And if you hold US telecom, SpaceX is now a name worth tracking in every carrier's earnings call from here on out.

Quant ratings are one lens, not a crystal ball. But they're a handy reminder that a scary headline and a broken business are two very different things.

Two days. That's how long it took to go from bondholder to policymaker.

According to a financial disclosure released Thursday, Trump bought between $1M and $5M in SpaceX bonds on August 18.

On August 20, he signed a policy designed to supercharge commercial space launches.

At that rate, the position pays roughly $53,500 to $267,500 a year in interest. That's a decent salary for a bond that just sits there.

The National Space Transportation Policy aims to support more than 1,000 U.S. launches and reentries every year by 2030.

The plan: faster permitting and wider commercial access to federal launch facilities.

So who launches a lot of rockets? Funny you should ask.

Elon Musk's SpaceX is a major NASA launch provider and a big U.S. government contractor. It's basically the Uber of getting to orbit.

SpaceX was one line on a long list. The August disclosure covered 517 securities transactions we covered yesterday.

That includes a $5M to $25M purchase of Meta shares on August 21, one day after the space policy.

Then on September 29, Trump hosted Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and other AI leaders at a White House summit.

At that meeting, he pushed back on calls for tighter AI safety regulation, favouring a lighter approach.

Richard Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush, told CNN there is a conflict of interest. He said he isn't accusing Trump of anything illegal, but that it "gives the appearance of corruption."

The White House says the portfolio is managed independently by third-party financial institutions.

According to a spokesperson, the holdings sit in discretionary accounts run by computer-based model portfolios that copy indexes like the Schwab 1000.

And to be fair: the timing alone doesn't prove Trump knew about the policy in advance. It just makes for a very awkward calendar.

Bondholders and shareholders win in different ways. These notes pay 5.35% and return the principal in 2031.

A booming launch business mainly makes that repayment look safer. The big upside from friendlier policy tends to flow to equity holders.

The bigger picture? Washington just sent pro-growth signals to two sectors at once: space and AI.

Whatever you make of the trades, policy moves markets. And these disclosures are public, so anyone can read them.

Plenty of traders already track politicians' portfolios like fantasy football stats. This filing won't slow that hobby down.