Francis Fukuyama’s famous wager was not that events would stop, but that Western liberal democracy had emerged as the endpoint of humanity’s ideological evolution and the final form of human government. That thesis always carried a whiff of triumphalist fatigue: the Cold War had ended, the Soviet alternative had collapsed, and the managerial nation-state of the Atlantic world presented itself as history’s mature form.

Remember Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS)? Since the Financial Crisis of 2008, they became a multi-trillion-dollar tool for the Federal Reserve to artificially prop up the housing market through its money creation process. At its peak in 2022, the Fed’s MBS holdings reached $2.74 trillion.

States like California are learning this in real time, as high-income earners relocate in response to rising tax pressure and growing fiscal uncertainty. The scale is hard to ignore. More than $90 billion in income has left the state since 2019—revealing how what appears to be a stable source of revenue on paper is far more fragile in practice.

On Saturday, Spirit Airlines officially shut down all operations.

The announcement came after negotiations for a nine-figure government bailout fell through. The budget airline was unable to continue business with the soaring price of jet fuel that has resulted from Trump’s war on Iran. But that was merely an accelerant. Spirit’s financial trouble goes back to the covid years.