Dispatches from the fiscal future arrive with unusual confidence this week. Prediction markets, citing odds of 98-in-100 on the Kalshi exchange, have all but stamped the ledger closed: America's national debt will reach new heights before the Trump administration concludes in early 2029. The wager against it commands the enthusiasm of a man betting on sunrise.

The stakes are considerable. The national debt already exceeds $36 trillion, and market consensus anticipates the familiar machinery of Washington — tax policy, defense spending, entitlement obligations, and the relentless arithmetic of interest payments — to grind ever upward. With $42,906 traded in a single day on this question alone, the betting public has rendered its verdict with something approaching indifference to suspense. At 98 percent probability, Kalshi's markets suggest this is less a prediction than a formality.