Though Presidents’ Day is here, the nation as a whole does not seem to take much notice. That’s too bad, because we can learn some valuable lessons—both for our country and for ourselves as individuals—by taking time to reflect seriously on the character and actions of America’s presidents.

At first sight, it may seem paradoxical for a democratic nation to celebrate Presidents’ Day. In a democracy, after all, the people call the shots, and their elected leaders, even those of the highest rank, are just servants of the public. What is there to celebrate if the president is no more than an instrument of the people’s will? Why honor him more than any other public official? Why not have a holiday in honor of the sovereign people instead?

If we turn to the constitutional thought of our nation’s Founders, however, we find that these initial impressions do not capture their views of the presidency—nor of America’s democratic republic. The Federalist teaches us that we have a unitary executive, which makes the presidency unique among the political offices created by the Constitution. In the other branches of the federal government, the houses of Congress and the Supreme Court, power and responsibility rest with a majority of the members.

On this episode of After America, Jon B Wolfsthal, former Special Assistant to President Obama for National Security Affairs, joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss the expiry of the New START nuclear weapons treaty between the United States and Russia, AUKUS and Australia’s nuclear capabilities, and why “nuclear weapons are back with avengeance”.

This discussion was recorded on Thursday 12 February 2026 Australian time.

The latest Vantage Point essay, What we owe the water: It’s time for a fossil fuel treaty by Kumi Naidoo, is available now for $19.95. Use the code ‘PODVP’ at checkout to get free shipping.

Guest: Jon B Wolfsthal, former Director of Global Risk, Federation of American Scientists // @jonatomic

Host: Emma Shortis, Director, International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @emmashortis

Show notes:

Trump has scrapped the long-standing legal basis for tackling climate emissions by Robyn Eckersley, The Conversation (February 2026)

Moltbook is being treated as a novelty. A curious, Reddit-like forum where AI agents post about their users, trade productivity advice, and banter with one another in ways that feel playful, even endearing. Much of the public reaction has framed it as harmless fun, a glimpse of quirky machine behaviour rather than a serious development. 

That interpretation is right to some extent, but also quite wrong with regard to what this represents. 

Per Capita’s Director of Econometric Research and Analysis, Dr Michael D’Rosario, writes in his paper “Moltbook and the Moment We Let AI Act on People”.

Download the full paper here

The post Moltbook and the Moment We Let AI Act on People appeared first on Per Capita.

By Meredith Eldridge, Director of Operations at Per Capita

We humans like to think that we are rational beings who make up our minds based on facts. Unfortunately for us, it is well-established that the vast majority of the time, people’s decisions are actually driven by emotion and subconscious mental shortcuts (see the work of Daniel Kahneman, Anat Shenker Osorio, Drew Westen, George Lakoff, and Sarah Stein Lubrano). This means that when people are deliberating social policy issues, facts and conscious reasoning play a smaller role than we might like.

We all have a Confirmation Bias, which means that if a new piece of information doesn’t fit with our current belief system, we are more likely to dismiss it as incorrect or unreliable rather than change our minds.

A thread left hanging from my previous post on F. A. Hayek entitled ‘What the heck’s going on with Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom?’ was the focus on international order, which entails Hayek’s assessment of the scalar problems of planning and his advocating the absorption of separate states in a federal organisation. The focus of Chapter 15 on international order in The Road to Serfdom is wide-ranging, addressing aspects of planning and including what Hayek refers to as ‘super-state’ or ‘super-national’ authority within an international system of states. Interesting positions are therefore reflected in this analysis on world-state formation that have been neglected within international theory. What does Hayek have to say that may interest approaches to the political economy of state formation and thinking on ‘the international’ today?

On Friday, we got the January CPI report. Headline year-over-year inflation came in at 2.4%, below the consensus expectation of 2.5%. On the surface, that looks like another step in the “inflation is cooling” narrative that has dominated over the past year.

But I want to explain why I don’t think this print changes the bigger picture—and why, from a business cycle and MMT perspective, we may actually be getting close to the point where inflation starts to reaccelerate.

More importantly, I want to walk through what this means for portfolios and asset positioning. Because if you wait for CPI to clearly turn higher before positioning for inflation, you’re probably already too late.

The Market Isn’t Fully Buying the “Cooling Inflation” Story

Here’s something interesting: even as CPI has cooled over the last year, assets that typically outperform in inflationary environments have been winning.

Think about what’s been working:

Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit was always going to deepen divisions within Australia, not heal them. Social cohesion can’t be built on a bedrock of police violence, criminalising protest, silencing dissent and ignoring international law.

Australia’s Jewish community needs comfort and support while they grieve the fifteen innocent lives lost in the Bondi massacre. But why not invite a religious leader to provide comfort instead of a deeply controversial political leader? The grief of the Palestinian community in Australia, who are mourning the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent civilians at the hands of Israel, was extended no such comfort or consideration by the Prime Minister or the NSW Premier in recent weeks.

Israel’s crimes in Gaza are monstrous and well-documented. The UN commission of inquiry found evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal intent by Israeli leaders and has recommended they be prosecuted.

He will equal Scott Morrison’s record of 1368 days on Thursday. On Friday, he’ll surpass him, leapfrogging both John Curtin and Morrison, to sit behind Paul Keating as the 12th longest-serving prime minister.

Short of his party moving against him, Albanese is almost certain to win another term as Prime Minister.

The Coalition is 28 seats behind. Even if there was a “thruplition” with One Nation, the Liberals, Nationals and Barnson would have to hold their existing 43 seats and win another 27 to take government.

And don’t expect that election to be held in 2028. New deputy leader Jane Hume was right last week when she said expected Albanese to take advantage of the Liberal Party’s decline and call an early election.

Labor is already eyeing off Forrest, La Trobe, Longman and Goldstein as potential seat gains. Bowman will be on the list.

The Liberals, or Nationals (depending on who wins that fight), will have a tough time holding on to Sussan Ley’s seat of Farrer, with One Nation on the march and a community independent having already shorn 10 points off Ley’s margin at the last election. It is very doubtful the Liberals or Nationals will run another woman in Farrer, which will leave the Coalition with just enough women in the lower house to fill a 2016 Honda Civic. That’ll be sure to arrest the number of women turning their back on the party!

The desire to bring new life into the world runs deep in human nature. We know instinctively that children are worthy of the greatest care, and that the mission of parents is among the noblest in life. If our natures did not tell us this so strongly, the pain of childbirth—with all the toil, trials, and heartbreak that follow—would never seem worth it.

The pain of unfulfilled desire for children runs equally and correspondingly deep. In Jewish and Christian Scripture, infertility is almost a byword for anguish, much as having children is a byword for joy, chief among the blessings of God (“Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine…” “The barren wife shall bear seven sons….”). From the beginning of our species to its present, the importance of raising and forming the next generation has been self-evident to all generations.

This is not a post about politics or law. It is personal, a remembrance of a friend who died last night.

Ethan Posner and I went to law school together, at the University of Michigan. We started in the fall of 1986. Ethan was an east coast guy who found himself in the midwest for law school. Ethan was a big person, physically and personality-wise. He was smart, articulate, and willing to speak up right from the get go. He stood out.

I got to know Ethan especially well when a classmate of ours enlisted him, our friend Jonathan Foot, and me for a study group in the first semester. We would come with our outlines prepared, and spend hours debating hypotheticals, continuing discussions from class and from meals in the dining hall. Ethan would sometime resort to picking me up and turning me upside down. As I told him, I took this as conclusive proof that my arguments had defeated him.

Mary Amiti, Chris Flanagan, Sebastian Heise, and David E. Weinstein

Over the course of 2025, the average tariff rate on U.S. imports increased from 2.6 to 13 percent. In this blog post, we ask how much of the tariffs were paid by the U.S., using import data through November 2025. We find that nearly 90 percent of the tariffs’ economic burden fell on U.S. firms and consumers.