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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent joined Mike Allen for a new episode of "The Axios Show," published Saturday morning.

Bessent spoke about the Iran war's effect on the cost of living for US consumers and his "I am the house" comment early last month, which warned anyone betting against the Treasury's defense of the long end of the market.

Beyond the broader global bond rout, his comments on the Strait of Hormuz added color to President Trump's economic stranglehold on Tehran.

"They are isolating them economically like this never happened before. You know, right now, the score: barrels out of the Strait: U.S. about 1.1 billion, Iran zero," Bessent told Allen.

Bessent continued, "For the first time in history, they, since they started pumping oil, they will have no oil on the water this week. They will have no revenue."

Bessent on Iran:

For the first time in history, since they started pumping oil, they will have no oil on the water this week.

They will have no revenues. pic.twitter.com/PIrHwUCG4q

— Clash Report (@clashreport) October 3, 2026

Separately, last week, Goldman analysts Yulia Zhestkova Grigsby, Alexandra Paulus, and Daan Struyven told clients that a "divergence between the fall of Iranian exports and the rise of exports of other Persian Gulf producers" was underway.

The Goldman energy experts estimated that "dark exports" have helped boost Persian Gulf oil exports to 23.3 million barrels a day over the past week, back to prewar levels.

Also last week, Bloomberg News reported that Iran's crude loadings crashed to zero in August from around 250,000 barrels per day.

Data providers Kpler and Vortexa also recorded zero crude loadings last month.

The collapse in Iranian crude loadings suggests the US naval blockade is constraining Tehran's export options, while recovering flows from other Gulf producers point to eroded Iranian leverage over the strait. If sustained, Tehran's oil revenues would plunge, pressuring the regime to make a deal. 

Saudi Arabia and Yemeni government forces have been preparing for a major offensive against Iran-backed Houthis, whose latest advances along Yemen's western coast have tightened their control over coastal areas and disrupted a critical maritime chokepoint known as the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Bloomberg now reports that the operation is underway.

The outlet reports that Rashad Al-Alimi, head of Yemen's Presidential Leadership Council, ordered all branches of the armed forces into active combat operations on Sunday.

"All state military, security and civil institutions as of this moment are mobilized and on high alert until the mission is completed and victory is achieved," Al-Alimi said on Sunday.

He said the operation would continue "until the liberation of the country from the grip of the terrorist Houthi militia."

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— ?/ ???? ???? ??????? (@PresidentRashad) October 4, 2026

Our reporting on Saturday indicated that more than 100,000 Yemeni pro-government troops were set to mobilize for the offensive. Last month, the ease and speed of Houthi gains proved humiliating for the Saudi coalition in Yemen.

The Houthis largely stayed out of the US-Israeli war against Iran. But by midsummer, the terror group had announced a blockade of Saudi ships in the critical maritime chokepoint in response to what it described as a "siege" of Yemen. It has since repeatedly attacked the kingdom, including its oil facilities.

On Saturday, multiple reports and footage circulating on X showed what appeared to be smoke rising from Saudi Aramco's Riyadh refinery.

Reuters reported Friday that Saudi air power would support Yemeni ground forces. The report did not specify which aircraft had been deployed for the operation, but the Saudis operate US-built F-15s, Eurofighter Typhoons and Tornado strike aircraft.

Beyond the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the latest data from Goldman show that crude oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz are back to pre-war levels, an indication that Tehran's leverage in the region has quickly eroded.

President Volodymyr Zelensky told Reuters in an exclusive interview that Ukraine plans to intensify attacks on Russian oil refineries in response to continued strikes on Ukrainian cities. The threat comes as the Trump administration pressures European allies to release up to 100 million barrels of emergency oil and diesel stocks ahead of the Northern Hemisphere winter, with a global refining crunch already straining fuel supplies.

Zelensky told the outlet that Ukrainian intelligence had obtained documents outlining what he described as Russian President Vladimir Putin's new war doctrine to broaden attacks on civilian infrastructure ahead of winter.

"We saw documents and we know that they allow them to attack infrastructure, logistics, and especially to attack in the cities, in the villages, everywhere, roads, schools, hospitals," Zelensky said. "To pressure people to leave the capital, leave different cities: this is the goal of the operation."

Zelensky then said, "We have to respond in any way (we can). With their attacks on our energy, we have to respond on their energy. First of all, oil refiners, etc.: what gives money to them for this war. But we will not respond, of course, just like them, on any civilian objects."

gonna need a bigger diesel emergency reserve release...

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 3, 2026

Zelensky's plan to further destroy Russia's refineries comes as the Trump administration seeks to revive peace negotiations. Zelensky said Russia had shown no willingness to discuss either peace talks or a ceasefire covering energy infrastructure.

The Trump administration's move to pressure European countries and other G7 members into releasing as much as 100 million barrels of emergency oil and diesel stocks, as confirmed by French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday, is likely in response to Zelensky's expanding drone and missile attacks on Russian energy assets, as stockpiles for critical fuels are well below seasonal levels for this time of year. 

The International Energy Agency is coordinating the emergency release, which will take place over the next four months, according to Macron.

Goldman energy analyst Nikhil Bhandari warned last month that the global refining crisis stems from a combination of disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz and, more importantly, Ukraine's bombardment of Russian refineries. Those attacks have prompted Moscow to extend its diesel export halt, suggesting the refining crisis could linger well into next year and keep refined-product prices elevated. 

Meanwhile, last Thursday at the Valdai Discussion Club in Moscow, Putin warned the Western allies to cease their escalation in Ukraine, stressing he's willing to use "all weapons" in the Russian arsenal in the scenario that Russia's exclave of Kaliningrad comes under attack.

Brazilians began voting earlier this morning in a statistically tied presidential election, with incumbent socialist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva holding a narrow polling lead over right-wing Senator Flávio Bolsonaro. Election results are expected later this evening, and the race is likely headed for a runoff later this month.

Lula and Bolsonaro are effectively deadlocked in a potential runoff. The latest AtlasIntel poll puts Lula at 47.6% against Bolsonaro's 47.4%, while Datafolha showed the incumbent ahead 47% to 46%. Quaest has Bolsonaro at 44% against Lula's 42%, within its two-point margin of error.

However, Polymarket bettors see a clearer favorite, giving Bolsonaro a 63.3% chance of winning versus 37% for Lula as of early Sunday morning.

Polls close nationwide at 5 p.m. Brazil time, or 4 p.m. in New York. Brazil's electronic voting system allows counting to begin immediately, with the electoral court expected to deliver a definitive result between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. Brazil time.

The race will determine whether Brazil continues down its destructive socialist path or cements what could be a once-in-a-generation political shift across South America, with the continent’s largest economy potentially moving to the right. Recent elections in Colombia, Peru, Chile and other countries have shifted from left-wing regimes to right-wing governments.

We outlined on Friday the potential market impacts and expected volatility following the first-round results:

• Brazil Braces For Election Volatility As Bolsonaro Gains On Lula, Bullish Options Bets Explode

One notable chart shows that the Brazilian real’s one-week implied volatility has jumped above 31%, its highest level since late 2022. That exceeds the one-month measure, which captures both voting rounds but remains below 25%, highlighting the extreme concentration of risk ahead of Sunday’s vote.

"We expect the biggest surprise to come in the first round, with Flávio likely to finish ahead of Lula," Fabricio Taschetto, CIO at Ace Capital, wrote in a note. He added that the market reaction could exceed the move already priced into options.

Citigroup and JPMorgan analysts have told clients to use options that would benefit from a stronger real, while Brazilian hedge funds, including Ibiuna and Verde, have told clients they have positioned themselves with options for a potential stock rally.

For most of the 2010s, the annual World Nuclear Association symposium in London was an exercise in group therapy: an industry reeling from Fukushima, German shutdowns and a seven-year uranium bear market, explaining to an indifferent world why it deserved to exist. Not anymore.

This year's gathering (Sept 9-11) drew a record crowd: attendance was up 17% from last year per BofA, with more than 1,000 delegates from 50 countries and 35 new WNA members. And the mood had changed completely. As Cameco CEO Tim Gitzel put it during his fireside chat:

"We don't need to sell the [nuclear] story anymore, we just need to convert it to action."

CIBC analyst Anita Soni, who also attended, summed up the three days the same way: "nuclear energy has largely won the policy and market acceptance debate, with attention now turning to execution at scale." The question is no longer whether the world builds reactors, but whether anyone can build them on time and on budget. On that front, the industry's track record needs little comment.

There's also a catch that Gitzel, whose Cameco owns 49% of Westinghouse, was candid about: in the West, nobody wants to go first. "Everyone is racing for bronze," he said. Most utilities would rather be the third to build a new large reactor than risk being the first. Constellation's Jason Murphy confirmed this from a separate panel: CEG is one of the companies that would "prefer to be third, not first." This is how you end up with a race in which all the runners stay at the starting line watching each other.

The symposium lined up nicely with the IAEA's annual outlook, which raised its long-term nuclear projections for the sixth consecutive year. Under the high case, global capacity hits 1,045 GWe by 2050 (from 992 GWe in last year's edition) and 1,284 GWe by 2060, or about 3.4x the 377 GWe operating at the end of 2025. Even the low case now roughly doubles capacity by 2060.

According to Northland's Jeff Grampp, the more important point is that the low case moved most: +14% to 641 GWe, versus +5% for the high case. In his view this "suggests a de-risking of the long-term growth narrative." North America's low case also flipped from contraction last year to growth this year (136 GWe by 2050, vs 98 GWe previously).

Northland makes two further points we agree with:

• The forecast is bottom-up and not reverse-engineered from a net-zero scenario, "which we think make these projections more credible/realistic." In other words, nobody started with 1.5°C and worked backward.
• The driver has changed from climate to energy security. "While its zero carbon attributes are compelling, we think the energy security investment case is stronger and more resilient than climate-based investment, which can ebb and flow with political regimes." We've been saying the same for years, and it's hard to argue with after watching Germany's economy minister call for a "nuclear rethink" as energy prices surged in April. Better late than never.

Then there are SMRs. Last year the IAEA saw small modular reactors taking 5%-24% of new capacity by 2050, a range so wide it was nearly meaningless, with the low end at a "paltry" 16 GWe. This year the band is 23%-28%, or about 120-285 GWe. In North America, ~60% of new nuclear capacity is expected to come from SMRs. Readers will know that we've long argued modular, behind-the-meter reactors are the only real long-term answer to the AI power problem, so it's nice to see the IAEA catching up (for much more, see "Bring Your Own Power Plant: Behind-The-Meter To Power 25% Of All Data Centers By 2030").

CIBC's Krista Friesen, in her Weekly Blueprint, adds a point that gets far less attention: the existing fleet is old. Two-thirds of operating reactors are more than 30 years old, and 46% are over 40. Even in the high case, about one-third of today's capacity retires by 2060. The industry therefore has to keep building just to stand still, and in 2025 it didn't quite manage that. Seven reactors (2.8 GW) were retired and only three (3.0 GW) were connected. Nuclear generation grew 1.1%, overall electricity generation grew 2.7%, while nuclear's share of global power fell to 8.4% from 8.7%.

The $6 trillion question

Day 1 of the symposium was a Finance Summit, and the headline number was large. Meeting the "Tripling Declaration" would require about $6 trillion over 25 years, with annual nuclear capex rising from about $80BN today to more than $250BN a year through 2050. (For reference, current aggregate national targets put global capacity at 1,457 GWe by 2050, which is almost a quadrupling.)

The notable change is that, as one Westinghouse/EDF/Orano/GE Vernova panel put it (per BofA), "A few years ago the question was whether there was sufficient investment money to do this. Now there is." CIBC reports that discussions are "now focused less on whether institutions will invest and more on when." The WNA also launched a World Nuclear Investment Guide to help turn a "specialized energy investment" into a mainstream infrastructure asset class. The goal is to take design, licensing, regulatory and supply-chain risk out of projects and leave only execution risk, which, based on history, is plenty.

The most useful comments came from the customers. On BofA's "Beyond offtake" panel, ExxonMobil said plainly that "the nuclear industry doesn't have a technology problem, it has a DEPLOYMENT problem", and argued that the risk model is wrong. In LNG or CCGT projects, nobody expects the technology vendor to carry most of the risk. The owner-operator does. Exxon is preparing a report proposing a new delivery model.

Amazon, which is putting "real money on the table" behind X-energy, made a point that should be pinned above every regulator's desk:

"No point for a PPA if the connections take 7 years."

That's the grid interconnection queue in one sentence, and it's why we've been pushing "behind the meter" on-site generation for data centers (going so far as to tweet in December: "Make 'behind the meter' mandatory"). Demand isn't the issue either: CIBC notes Microsoft plans to more than triple its data center capacity to over 38 GW by 2032 from about 12 GW, excluding rented neocloud capacity. Those gigawatts have to come from somewhere.

Meanwhile, China just builds them

While the West waits to see who goes first, China explained how it does things. Ma Yuanhua of State Nuclear Power Technology Corp. said China had 62 reactors operating (66 GW) and 58 under construction (69 GW) as of July, with targets of 110 GW by 2030 and 150 GW by 2035. The method is dull and it works: standardization, specialization, centralization. Targets include 80% design reuse, a 56-month construction schedule, 93%+ factory acceptance rates, and centralized procurement. (By comparison, some Western projects have spent longer than 56 months on permitting.)

Of course, it depends who is counting. SNPTC's 58 includes projects China considers underway. The WNA only counts reactors once the first concrete has been poured, and by that stricter definition, per Goldman's monthly tracker, China had 37 reactors under construction as of Aug 11, more than twice India (8) and Russia (7) combined, and nearly as many as the other 16 countries on the list put together (42). The U.S. doesn't appear on the chart at all, which is the more telling number. As we summarized it on Aug 13: "China 37 nuclear reactors under construction; US 0."

This is where "everyone racing for bronze" leads: the U.S. hasn't even qualified for the race yet, while China is already building its next reactors.

The Western lesson was said out loud. Constellation: "The West should apply the China model." Speakers backed a "license once, review once, build many" framework, and there's real movement. Finland's regulatory overhaul cuts binding requirements from about 8,000 to 1,500, the U.S. NRC is changing its culture under the ADVANCE Act, and Europe's ENGARD initiative aims to harmonize design reviews across countries.

Other highlights from around the world:

• Japan is back. TEPCO restarted Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Unit 6 on Feb 9 after 14 years offline. Kansai Electric says 15 reactors have now restarted since Fukushima, and Japan's policy has moved from "reducing" to "maximizing" nuclear, with a 20% share targeted by 2040 and 11-14 new large reactors by the 2050s. We asked back in May whether new Japanese build was inevitable. The answer appears to be yes. 

How it's done:

This is TEPCO’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power station in Niigata. The seven-unit site has 8.2GW of capacity, making it the world's largest power plant. Unit 6 entered commercial operation on 16 April 2026, returning a 1.36GW Advanced Boiling Water Reactor to… pic.twitter.com/N2HrvHfFhA

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 30, 2026

• Poland has secured €17BN for its first plant, with three AP1000s in preparation.
• Czech Republic is moving to 80-year operations and building new units plus a Rolls-Royce SMR.
• USA: Following the May 2025 Executive Order calling for 10 large reactors under construction by 2030, DOE's $17.5BN long-lead procurement program has letters of intent with seven unnamed counterparties. Some attendees are optimistic about 1-2 site announcements before the midterms. TerraPower has its construction permit and an active job site in Wyoming.
• Africa: Togo's president signed on to the tripling pledge and will host the NEISA summit in 2027, noting that Africa wants "partnerships and investment rather than technology handouts."
• Ships: HD Korea Shipbuilding presented on nuclear-powered commercial vessels, a timely follow-on to Washington laying the groundwork for offshore nuclear in July. Its risk disclosure was admirably honest: "It might not work."

The real bottleneck: you can't 3D-print a uranium deposit

This is where the symposium got most interesting for markets. Reactors can be standardized, financed and eventually built. The fuel to run them is a different problem. Here is what CCJ's Gitzel said, via BofA:

Uranium mining is the bottleneck, as deposits are non-reproducible and lead times from discovery to production range up to 20 years; while fuel conversion, enrichment and fabrication can be more easily addressed with capital alone.

Kazatomprom's Dastan Kosherbayev put it more bluntly: after years of underinvestment, producers will prioritize customers who give clear, long-term demand signals. Kazatomprom will "no longer turn down attractive eastern deals in anticipation of potential western demand." Put simply, Western utilities that have been waiting for spot dips may find the East has bought the inventory. This comes as Russia banned sulphuric acid exports through year-end, threatening about 3MM lbs of Kazakh 2027 output, while Kazatomprom agreed to sell uranium to Rosatom's Uranium One. Coincidences happen.

Northland ran the numbers, and they are large:

• Uranium: At 0.4-0.5MM lbs per GWe per year, the IAEA's 641-1,045 GWe range implies 288-470MM lbs of annual demand by 2050, versus about 168MM lbs today, and that's before replacing depleted mines.
• Enrichment: Excluding Russian and Chinese SWU, Western demand is about 28.5MM SWU against about 24.8MM SWU of supply (per Urenco). The West is already in deficit. In the IAEA high case, demand rises to about 57MM SWU, a ~32MM SWU shortfall, or up to 69MM if SMRs running on HALEU take 30%-50% share.

Urenco confirmed this from the supply side: its order book has grown from €8.7BN in 2021 to €21.3BN, and it is adding 4.6MM SWU, almost a third more capacity, "based on a market assessment, not orders." Separately, Constellation said LEU+ (fuel enriched up to 10%) will allow 24-month reload cycles across its fleet, and Silex/GLE expects its laser enrichment license near Paducah by 2027. As we noted when DOE put $2.7BN behind domestic enrichment in January, the fuel chain is where the money is going.

Prices are responding. BofA's charts:

On uranium, the long-term contract price hit an all-time high of $96.50/lb (even if nuclear stocks have not noticed), above the prior 2007 peak of $95.00, as we noted in "Uranium Needs To Go Higher" earlier this month. BofA reaffirmed its forecasts: $104.20/lb for 2026 and $129.80/lb for 2027, which would be a new record, before easing to a long-term $84.75.

Spot has also been trading below term, as the chart above shows. BofA says the important change is who is buying. Producers' share of term selling fell from 92% in 2023 to 76% in 2025, and "rising utility participation in the term market is a driver of higher U3O8 prices, as churn... is replaced by end-user consumptive demand." In other words, less trading between hedge funds and more buying by utilities that actually need the fuel.

For those who think the move is over, here's the 38-year chart. Uranium remains well below its 2007 nominal peak, even though the demand story is now much broader.

None of this is new to regular readers. Goldman flagged a cumulative 2.3 billion lb uranium supply deficit through 2045 in May when it added SMRs to its models, and we argued in August that the market is still underpricing the nuclear build cycle.

How to trade it: picks and shovels over reactor dreams

The sell side mostly agrees on direction, but not on where to position along the value chain:

• BofA (Lawson Winder) "remains constructive" and names buy-rated U.S.-listed exposure: CEG, TLN, VST in power; CCJ and OKLO among vendors; and CCJ and STDN in the fuel cycle.
• Northland (Jeff Grampp) is also long-term bullish but more careful on timing. He cut price targets on reactor developers (IMSR to $8 from $15, SMR to $10 from $16, NNE to $22 from $37) to reflect higher costs of capital (i.e., more dilution) and a slower 2030-2035 buildout. He instead favors fuel and supply-chain names that make money now: BWXT, LEU, EU, URG, MIR. Asked to choose between enrichment and uranium, Northland picks uranium.

That seems like the right reading of the symposium. The long-term story is intact and improving, with the IAEA raising forecasts again, hyperscalers writing checks and Japan back in the game. The near-term constraints are physical: fuel, forgings, workers and grid connections. Reactor developers have to wait for the first Western mover to deliver on time and on budget. Uranium miners and enrichers don't. Both need the same uranium.

As Kansai Electric's delegate said, the industry's next phase is about "disciplined vision," and increasingly about meeting in person, "becoming more analog in an increasingly digital world." That's also a fair description of uranium: a physical asset that can't be replicated, needed to power data centers, and in short supply.

More in the full notes: BofA Global Research, "Postcard from the 2026 WNA Symposium" (Sept 15); CIBC Capital Markets, "2026 World Nuclear Symposium" (Sept 15) and "IAEA Raises Nuclear Outlook For Sixth Consecutive Year – The Weekly Blueprint" (Sept 14); Northland Capital Markets, "Takeaways From Updated IAEA Nuclear Forecast" (Sept 17), all available to pro subs.

Authored by Julia R. Cartwright via The Daily Economy,

Imagine it's January in New York and you're sharing a tiny apartment with two roommates. The walls are crumbling around you, and there's a hole in your bedroom wall big enough to see outside. Every time it rains or snows, water drips into your room. You call your landlord to fix it over and over again, but nothing happens.

This is reality for many New Yorkers. This degradation is the predictable result of decades of housing policy that has kept supply scarce and left rent-regulated buildings to decay. Many people blame it on big-city life, but lessons from Tokyo show us that it doesn't have to be that way.

Tokyo Metropolis is home to about 14.27 million people, far more than New York City's roughly 8.5 million. Yet renting in a city not quite twice the size costs a fraction of what it does in the biggest city in the US.

In the mid-1990s, a one-bedroom apartment in Tokyo cost about the same as one in New York, a little less than $1,000 a month. By 2025, a New York one-bedroom averaged about $4,400 per month, while a Tokyo one-bedroom ran about $1,270. A weaker yen explains part of that gap, but even in yen, Tokyo rents barely moved in 30 years while New York's rents nearly tripled.

Housing prices ultimately come down to supply and demand. So how has Tokyo managed to keep housing relatively affordable, while New York has struggled to do the same?

Tokyo has been focused on keeping up with demand; its housing stock nearly tripled between 1963 and 2013, reaching 7.36 million homes. To do this, Japan keeps zoning flexible. Instead of limiting each area to a single use, zoning allows homes, shops, and light industry to coexist on the same blocks. Projects that follow these rules can be built "as-of-right," without discretionary review or giving neighbors the power to block them.

Japan's zoning rules are uniform across the country. The national government defines 13 standard zones instead of leaving land use to individual neighborhoods. That top-down approach cuts both ways, however, since a national system could tighten rules as easily as loosen them, but Japan's has repeatedly loosened them to allow more housing.

New York City's zoning works in nearly the opposite way. A site-specific rezoning goes through the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, a review so onerous that about 40 percent of private rezoning proposals fail to get approved. About 27 percent of Manhattan's lots are under restrictive landmark regulations, and historic districts see new buildings at about one-sixth the rate of other lots.

Then there are the empty NYC apartments. The 2019 Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act capped rent increases on vacant rent-stabilized units and limited how much renovation cost landlords can recover. When a $700-a-month unit needs $100,000 of work to meet code, many owners leave it empty; this helps explain why nearly 57,000 rent-stabilized apartments were empty in 2025.

Continuing their stance of flexibility, Tokyo has allowed smaller apartments to be built. A typical one-bedroom is about 430 square feet, compared with 590 for a New York one-bedroom. Smaller apartments lower the barrier to entry for single renters and young professionals to get their own place.

New York spent decades making small units hard to build through a 400-square-foot minimum rule dating to 1987 and zoning rules called the "Dwelling Unit Factor" that forced large average unit sizes. The "City of Yes" amendment only eased those rules in December 2024, after decades of limiting the kinds of smaller, cheaper apartments Tokyo builds routinely.

Buildings in Japan also turn over faster. Japan's tax code depreciates a wooden house over 22 years, and the average Japanese home is demolished at about 32 years old, versus roughly 70 in the US. Old stock gets replaced with newer, denser buildings instead of being preserved indefinitely.

Japan's inclusive regulations result in much more building. Tokyo averaged about 155,000 housing starts a year from 1995 to 2015 and still starts roughly 130,000 annually; New York, by contrast, added roughly 50,000 in 2025. Since the 1960s, Tokyo's stock has nearly tripled while New York's has grown only 20 to 30 percent.

Factory-built homes also help ease supply constraints. One Japanese Sekisui House plant produces about 20 houses a day, and roughly 13 percent of new Japanese homes are prefab or modular. New York has only recently started experimenting with modular construction, and it remains a small share of the city's building, far behind Japan.

To be fair, Tokyo isn't cheap by Japanese standards, but it has accommodated millions without New York-style crumbling buildings and vacant units. New York is moving the other way: Mamdani's Rent Guidelines Board froze rents for roughly one million stabilized apartments. The freeze helps current tenants but creates no new homes, and analysts expect more units to sit empty as prices for non-stabilized apartments keep rising.

The renter watching snow blow through the hole in her bedroom wall won't be saved by another year of frozen rent. Instead of doubling down on the policies that brought scarcity, dilapidated apartments, and sky-high rents, New York could take a lesson from Tokyo, where the way to make housing affordable has been to make a lot more of it.

Julia R. Cartwright is an economist whose work specializes in law and economics, political economy, and economic development. Her research features topics like the governance structures of crypto markets, the economic consequences of judicial interventions in courts in East Africa, and the development impact of housing regulations.