Barron's mentioned in July 21, 2025 issue that CAT bond issuance for YTD (then) was already more than that for full 2024. Be careful with hot areas attracting lot of money.
If there are no recent catastrophic events, then the CAT bond investors win.
In the last few years, there have been some catastrophes related to fire and flooding.
Barron's August 19, 2024 had this:
INCOME FUNDS. Catastrophe bonds (CAT BONDS) are speculative insurance-linked bonds whose principals absorb insurers’ catastrophic losses (from hurricanes, earthquakes, etc), if any. If there are no, or not enough, claims for catastrophic events, then the cat bond holders win. Mentioned are OEFs ACBAX, SHRIX, EMPIX; several ETFs are coming; there are also some (nontraded) interval-funds.

The Trump administration on Friday night asked the Supreme Court to pause a ruling by a federal judge in Rhode Island that requires the government to pay $4 billion to fully fund the federal food-stamp program for November. The “unprecedented” order by U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. “makes a mockery of the separation of powers,” U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote. Sauer acknowledged that the “funding lapse” due to the 38-day government shutdown “is a crisis,” but he called it “a crisis occasioned by congressional failure and one that can only be solved through congressional action.”
Sauer asked the court to issue an administrative stay – that is, to put the ruling on hold to give it time to consider his request – by 9:30 p.m. EST on Friday.
Congress funds the program, known as the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, during its annual appropriations process. The program was fully funded through Sept. 30, 2025, the end of the 2025 fiscal year, but there has been no appropriation for the 2026 fiscal year.
On Oct. 24, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the program, announced that it had suspended benefits for November because of the government shutdown. That prompted a group of nonprofits and cities to go to federal court in Rhode Island, where they argued that the suspension of benefits violated the federal laws governing administrative agencies. They asked McConnell to require the agency to use emergency funds to pay for the November benefits.
McConnell initially offered the Trump administration a choice between quickly making partial payments from the emergency funds or fully funding the November benefits using funds from other sources. The Trump administration chose the former option, but on Thursday, McConnell ordered the Trump administration to go with the latter option and pay the November benefits in full by Friday.
The Trump administration appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit. When it filed its application, the court of appeals had not acted on the government’s request. In a letter distributed to reporters shortly after the Trump administration’s application was filed, Sauer told the justices that the 1st Circuit had denied the government’s request for an immediate administrative stay but indicated that it would act “as quickly as possible” on the request for a stay pending appeal.
Urging the justices to block McConnell’s ruling, Sauer argued that “the SNAP statute is explicit that SNAP benefits are subject to available appropriations, and it states plainly that SNAP payments shall not exceed the funds appropriated for the program.” If there is not enough funding, he wrote, “USDA will direct States to reduce their benefits—which is exactly what USDA did this week.”
Moreover, Sauer warned, if McConnell’s ruling is “allowed to stand,” it will “metastasize and sow further shutdown chaos. Every beneficiary of a federal program could run into court, point to an agency’s general discretion to prioritize funding, and claim that failing to prioritize their chosen program” violated the federal law governing administrative agencies.
Finally, Sauer continued, once the funds have been paid out, “there is no ready mechanism for the government to recover” them.
In an order released to reporters at 9:17 p.m. EST on Friday night, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued the administrative stay that the government had requested, giving the court of appeals time to weigh in on the Trump administration’s motion for a stay pending appeal. “This administrative stay will terminate forty-eight hours after the First Circuit’s resolution of the pending motion, which the First Circuit is expected to issue with dispatch.”

The supreme court has issued an emergency order temporarily blocking full Snap food aid payments. The high court’s order came after the Trump administration asked a federal appeals court on Friday to block a judge’s order that it distribute November’s full monthly food stamp benefits amid a US federal government shutdown.
After that request to block was denied, the Trump administration turned to the supreme court in a further attempt to block the order to fully fund Snap food aid payments.
The application to stay reads: “If forced to transfer funds to Snap to make full November allotments, there is no means for the government to recoup those expenditures – which is quintessential irreparable harm. Once those payments are made, there is every indication that the States will promptly disburse them. And once disbursed, the government will be un-able to recover any funds. Worse, these harms will only compound if the decision below stands.
“There is every reason to expect that if the shutdown lingers, the court below will not command the government to tap these funds again in December to support Snap – blowing a bigger hole in the budget for the child nutrition programs.”
The application – which was filed at about 7pm ET – also requested that the supreme court grant the “immediate administrative stay of the district court’s orders by 9.30pm” on Friday. Shortly after 9.30pm, attorney general Pam Bondi shared a note on X saying that the supreme court “just granted our administrative stay in this case. Our attorneys will not stop fighting, day and night, to defend and advance President Trump’s agenda.”
US district judge John J McConnell Jr had given the Trump administration until Friday to make the payments through Snap, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, after the administration said last month that it would not pay benefits for November because of the shutdown.
On Friday, Patrick Penn, deputy undersecretary at the Department of Agriculture, wrote in a memo to states that the government “will complete the processes necessary” to fully fund Snap for now and the funds will be available on Friday.
But also on Friday, the Trump administration asked the appeals court to suspend any court orders requiring it to spend more money than is available in a contingency fund. The court filing came even as the spokesperson for Wisconsin’s governor said on Friday that some Snap recipients in the state already had received their full November payments overnight on Thursday.
“We’ve received confirmation that payments went through, including members reporting they can now see their balances,” she said. The court wrangling prolonged weeks of uncertainty for the food program that serves about one in eight Americans, mostly with lower incomes.
Last week, in separate rulings, two judges ordered the government to pay at least part of the benefits using an emergency fund. It initially said it would cover half, but later said it would cover 65%.

By the time the FED chair is replaced we may be looking at even higher inflation.

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The 2-year yield knows better than the 400 PhD economists working at the Fed what the FOMC ought to do with its target rate. The FOMC makes big mistakes when they think that they know better than the silly old bond market.