The yield on 10-year US treasuries has charged through the 5% barrier.
The spread between French government bonds and German bonds is at a level not seen since the Eurozone
crisis in 2012. Britain's newish Prime Minister has this week set out a plan for spending bolstered
by a taboo-busting promise to curb state pension increases and yet is still in a fiscal pickle.
Across the world, countries are struggling to coax more growth out of their economies.
And that's not the worst of it.
As we explain this week, the tax base in all countries,
which depends heavily on taxing labour, may be upended by artificial intelligence.
Add these problems together,
and it is as if a mighty hurricane were about to hit the rich world's tax systems, which are hopelessly unprepared.
The way the state raises money is wasteful, unfair, and perverse.
You would have thought the government would be scrambling to strengthen the system before the hurricane makes landfall,
but as ever, they are running away from tax reform instead.
The accumulated flaws of modern tax systems are so ubiquitous that they have become part of the economic backdrop.
Taxes are full of needless complexity.
In Germany, the rate of value-added tax, or VAT, on oat milk is more than double that on cow's milk, for example.
Such widespread special treatment has ruinous fiscal consequences.
Across the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries,
consumption taxes raise only 58% of what they could if there were no carve-outs and no evasion.
Tax systems also create perverse incentives.