Rebel Capitalist Weekly Report | Aug 16, 2026

The government just ran the largest July deficit in recorded history and the bond market did not blink. The consumer, on the other hand, broke. Here's your weekly dose of what is going on inside the economy.

Three price prints landed last week and every one of them behaved. Consumer prices came in exactly where the street had them, on all four lines. Producer prices came in softer than expected. Jobless claims ticked up and stayed historically low.

Then on Friday the consumer buckled. Retail sales fell six tenths of a percent against a consensus looking for a small gain, and consumer sentiment gave back its entire summer recovery in a single month.

In between, on Wednesday afternoon, the Treasury reported that the federal government ran a 432 billion dollar deficit. Not for the quarter. For the month. That is the largest July on record and the largest month of any kind since March 2021.

The ten-year Treasury yield fell on the news.

That combination is the week. The number everyone says will eventually break the bond market got printed, and the bond market rallied. The number that did move things arrived two days later with no headline attached to it.

There is also an asterisk on that deficit that almost nobody put in print, and it matters.

CONTINUE READING for the asterisk on the record deficit, why deficits do not set long-term interest rates and what does, the part of the PPI report that was not soft at all, the strongest evidence against the bearish case stated in full, and where gold, the miners and bitcoin sit against their own trend lines. Join us beyond the paywall, if you have not done so already.