In this week's episode, we look at the US government shutdown, which is making headlines again. It grabs attention, but let’s cut through the noise.

Shutdowns are theatre. They don’t change the fundamentals overnight, but they do show us how fragile the system has become.

The US runs on debt. Each year the ceiling gets lifted. Each year the debate gets nastier.

Shutdowns are the symptom of a bigger problem: an economy built on borrowed money with no political consensus on how to fix it.

That matters more than the shutdown itself.

Markets usually shrug these events off. Equities bounce back once a deal is done. But repeated dysfunction eats away at confidence.

The real story is in bond yields. Investors see a government unable to manage its balance sheet, so they demand higher returns to lend money.

That’s why yields have been rising, and why the US dollar stays strong in the short run but vulnerable in the long run.

For Australia, this isn’t abstract. Higher US yields set the tone for our own rates. The RBA can’t ignore what happens in Washington. Mortgage costs rise. Investment flows adjust. Capital gets repriced.

The lesson for investors: don’t get distracted by the noise of shutdown headlines. Focus on the signal. Rising debt costs. Shifting capital flows.

A global economy that is being repriced as the cost of money climbs. These are the changes that will shape property, credit, and wealth creation over the next decade.