The $29 Trillion Debt Rollover Nightmare

The $29 Trillion Debt Rollover Nightmare

Martin Armstrong

Governments and corporations are expected to borrow a record $29 trillion from global bond markets in 2026, according to the OECD. That is $4 trillion more than in 2024 and twice the amount borrowed only ten years ago. The financial press will present this as evidence that debt markets remain deep and resilient, but 78% of the borrowing by OECD governments will not finance new roads, productive industry, or economic expansion. It will be used merely to refinance debt that already exists.

This is the Ponzi structure underlying modern government finance. Politicians speak as though debt is repaid, but governments almost never repay the principal. When a bond matures, they issue another bond to obtain the money needed to redeem the first one. They then borrow still more to finance the current deficit and increasingly borrow to pay interest on the debt accumulated by previous administrations. The entire system functions only while investors remain willing to roll the obligations forward.

The $29 trillion figure is annual borrowing, not the total amount of outstanding debt. Sovereign and corporate bond markets combined have already reached approximately $109 trillion. The system must therefore absorb an enormous wave of new securities every year merely to prevent old promises from defaulting. This is why the refinancing cycle matters far more than the political debate over whether a technical default will occur. A government can continue paying every bondholder on time while still entering a debt crisis if refinancing costs rise beyond what its tax base can sustain.

The competition for capital is becoming vicious. Governments need money for welfare states, pensions, military expansion, energy subsidies, industrial policy, and the interest on existing debt. Corporations must refinance their own obligations while funding new investment, and the artificial-intelligence race is adding another enormous borrower to the market.

War will make this rollover crisis far worse. Governments are expanding defense budgets while rebuilding supply chains, stockpiling strategic resources, subsidizing domestic manufacturing, and attempting to reduce dependence on geopolitical rivals. These expenditures are being added to budgets that were already insolvent before the War Cycle turned higher. They are preparing for a global conflict with borrowed money while the cost of that money is rising.

This is why the Sovereign Debt Crisis will not resemble the 1930s or some dramatic bankruptcy proceeding. Governments that borrow in their own currencies can create the money necessary to make nominal payments, but they cannot create purchasing power. They will repay creditors in depreciated currency, force financial institutions to hold public debt, suppress interest rates below inflation, impose capital controls, and search for new ways to trap private savings inside the system. Default will come through the destruction of the currency and the confiscation of wealth rather than a polite announcement that the Treasury has missed a payment.

The world must absorb $29 trillion in borrowing during 2026 while war expands, rates rise, central banks retreat from bond markets, and private industry competes for the same capital. The system remains functional only because confidence has not yet completely broken. Once investors question whether rolling government debt forward is worth the risk, the refinancing machine will seize. Governments do not have $29 trillion sitting in a vault to repay these obligations. They have only the ability to borrow again, tax the public, or destroy the value of money.

The Coming Famine: How to Engineer a Food Crisis

How to Engineer a Food Crisis

BP

The UK seems to be in a world of hurt.

The media has been abuzz about the need to stock canned goods due to “food shortages,” blaming global warming and hostile nations:

Remarkably, these were exactly the causes blamed in many tabletop exercises, including Food Chain Reaction Game 2015—keynoted by none other than John Podesta—which, unsurprisingly, demanded “better global governance.”

But the genesis of this “new” food crisis, being used to justify an acceleration of gene-edited crops and other unpopular measures advancing the technocratic takeover of food, lies not in Russian aggression or CO2, but in bad policies and economic warfare against farmers for generations.

Though several novels could be dedicated to the systematic strangulation of British agriculture, I will highlight only a select few to paint the rough picture:

INHERITANCE TAX

While the UK’s general inheritance tax (IHT) sits at 40%, farms historically have been shielded from this by an “Agricultural Property Relief” policy. Family farms were handed down from one generation to the next, as has been done by humans since the dawn of time.

That ended on April 6, 2026.

IHT relief for agricultural property was capped this year to £2.5 million — which really doesn’t go far considering the value of farmland and requisite equipment. Everything thereafter is subject to an effective IHT of 20% on farm land and assets that are already running on a very thin margin. This is how a cash-poor, asset-rich farm gets sold to pay the tax bill.

This is staggeringly bad policy, forcing experienced farmers off their land. It is also, in my view, wholly immoral — but we’ll set that aside.

UNPLUGGING THE LIFE SUPPORT

The UK has cut off financial support from farms. Britain once paid farmers to grow food. The EU turned that into a land cheque called the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS). After Brexit, this subsidy to producers (now called ‘delinked payments’) was set to expire gradually over time, shifting instead to a “Sustainable Farming Incentive.”

While the BPS began at £180–£230/ha, resulting in an average payment of £28,400/year, the delinked payments are this year (2026) capped at £600. Yet the SFI “replacing” it was shut down in 2025 when its budget was exhausted. Thousands of producers were left out to dry:

These payments to farmers to ensure food security, which began post-WW2 and upon which farmers became dependent, have been unceremoniously eroded. This, alone, has been a disaster for British producers, pushing many into a cash flow crisis.

SHUTTING DOWN FARMS

Now that the farms were unprofitable, the UK went further, actively incentivizing some producers to stop farming their land and shed their livestock. This was achieved through a new Land Use plan which even the Guardian was forced to summarize as “taking farms out of food production:”

Right about now you might be shaking your head, “They set a goal of stopping farms from growing food?” Yes. Yes, they did.

The Knepp Castle Estate is one such example. Their homepage tells the story quite clearly. Where once winter wheat, barley, oats, maize were grown, and 600 dairy cows and sheep were raised, now one finds yurts available for rental:

Food security explicitly took a backseat to the 30×30 plan, as adopted at COP15, and the idea that land should be released back to nature and “rewilded.”

Now, with yields indeed at historic lows, we see the headlines blaming Russia and climate change. We hear the National Farmers’ Union president Tom Bradshaw saying it “does feel like there is going to be some shortages,” and, in the same breath, that many producers may not have the cash to plant next year.

And yet, somehow, this entirely relevant backstory is lost, eclipsed by the administration’s rush to adopt gene-edited food and drone-surveilled precision agriculture.

They did not need to ban traditional farming. They simply made the farm economically unviable, paid producers to do anything other than produce, and are now calling the missing food a “climate emergency.”

While the British have been quite explicit about the process, fundamentally their actions have been unexceptional:

• - In the Netherlands, nitrogen rules and buyout schemes have already taken hundreds of livestock farms out
• - In Germany, too, farmers associations are warning producers may not have the cash to plant the next crop[full report here]

Don’t let them call this climate change. This food crisis was engineered through policy, and is now being marketed as weather.

And that is all the more reason we should be growing more food and redoubling efforts at creating lasting food security for our families and communities.

Putin’s 'doomsday' submarine capable of producing radioactive tsunamis launches for first time

Putin’s doomsday submarine capable of producing radioactive tsunamis launches for first time

ETH

Russia’s newest nuclear submarine, built to carry the Poseidon “doomsday” torpedo capable of triggering radioactive tsunamis, has put to sea for the first time.

According to a report from the Daily Mail, the Kremlin quietly dispatched the 10,000-ton Khabarovsk on sea trials in the White Sea last week with no public ceremony. The vessel is designed to carry as many as six Poseidon nuclear-powered torpedoes in addition to conventional anti-ship and land-attack missiles.

Poseidon is described as having a range exceeding 6,000 miles and the ability to operate at depths of 3,280 feet. Analysts say an underwater nuclear detonation from the weapon could, in theory, generate a massive radioactive surge that would drive tsunami-like waves far inland, threatening coastal cities with both flooding and long-term contamination.

The launch comes amid heightened rhetoric from Russian state media. Kremlin-aligned commentators have urged President Vladimir Putin to use Poseidon against Britain in response to London’s supply of drones that have struck Russian territory. State television presenter Vladimir Solovyov declared: “Give the British three days to learn to breathe underwater, then hit them with Poseidon.”

Putin himself confirmed an earlier Poseidon test this year, stating that Russia launched the weapon from a submarine and then activated its onboard nuclear reactor. Last year he told military officials: “There is nothing like this.

There is no way to intercept it.” Former president Dmitry Medvedev has called Poseidon a genuine “doomsday weapon.” Russian commentators have even suggested it could “drown Britain,” though Western analysts describe such claims as exaggerated while acknowledging the system was built to instill fear.

The Khabarovsk, reportedly costing £1 billion, was developed after the United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002. Defence Minister Andrei Belousov said the “heavy nuclear-powered missile cruiser Khabarovsk is being launched from the renowned Sevmash shipyard” and would carry “underwater weapons and robotic systems” to secure Russia’s maritime borders.

Experts caution that a continent-scale radioactive tsunami remains scientifically uncertain, yet that uncertainty itself serves as a strategic tool. Dr Richard Connolly of the Royal United Services Institute called Poseidon “a boutique capability” designed for “the very worst of scenarios.” He added that any actual use against Britain would trigger retaliation from the UK’s Trident nuclear deterrent: “So they wouldn’t do it, because they know they’d pay a price.”

Even a limited strike, however, could devastate harbors, contaminate coastlines, and leave land toxic for years. The quiet departure of the Khabarovsk into the White Sea has therefore sharpened attention on a weapon whose mere existence is intended to alter calculations in any future confrontation.