Thursday Night Links

• A roughly accurate way to think about financial structure is that bonds and loans monetize stability, converting some predictable future stream of cash flows from the company into liquidity that's available now. Equity monetizes growth, converting hypothetically higher earnings in the future into cash today. You might think that convertible bonds split the difference, by functioning as bonds when the company does poorly and stock when it does well, but given their embedded option, they're actually closer to a way for companies to monetize their volatility. And they are eager to do this right now ($, WSJ); year-to-date convertible bond issuance is just 20% below where it was in 2021, while US IPO issuance for the first half of this year was ~$18bn, down from $84bn in 2021. The most pleasant way to think about this is that stocks are cheaper than they were at the peak of the excesses a few years ago, and that companies don't want to give up their equity that easily. The less cheerful possibility is that whether or not valuations are high, companies recognize that uncertainty about their own future can turn into more certainty about their cash position, and they'll take that opportunity when it's offered. [The Diff]
• Should Vance become the Vice-President, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—all conservative Catholics—would have a Catholic ally of like mind in the executive branch. (President Biden’s Catholicism leans progressive, and is more devotional than doctrinal.) For now, Vance’s presence on the ticket represents the union of Trumpism and a movement that sees Catholicism as the embodiment of tradition, stability, and a top-down ordering of society, which would be enshrined through regime change. That’s a lot of symbolism to lay on a commitment of faith that a thirty-nine-year-old man made just five years ago, but Vance’s embrace of Catholicism is deeply bound up with his stated belief that religion has the power to shape the country. [New Yorker]
• On the menu today: A new report contends that Minnesota governor Tim Walz is on the short list to be Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate. This is almost laughable when you look at Walz’s record running the state government, which somehow manages to combine the honesty of former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, the competence of former Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco, and the sharp-eyed ethical-watchdog instincts of soon-to-be-former New Jersey senator Bob Menendez. A whole lot of shady and unethical people in Minnesota see the state government as a giant pile of money just waiting to be taken, with a sleepy guard in the form of the governor. [National Review]
• The Legislative Building houses the chambers of the Washington State Legislature and offices of several elected officials. This building is the dominant feature of the capitol grounds, with its dome 287 feet (87 m) high, making it the tallest self-supporting masonry dome in the United States, and fifth tallest in the world, surpassed only by St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, St. Paul's Cathedral in London, Global Vipassana Pagoda in Mumbai, and Santa Maria Del Fiore in Florence. [Washington State Capitol]
• Based on the above, is it fair to conclude that the inevitable End Stage of European Christianity is Rainbow Flagism and/or Queers for Palestine? Spaniards were willing to fight for centuries to make the Iberian peninsula completely Christian. Now Spain is covered in the sacred symbols of Rainbow Flagism and is on track for a conversion to Islam via immigration demographics. [Phil Greenspun]
  
• The opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games have given scandal, not only because of the arrogant display of the ugly and the obscene, but because of the infernal subversion of Good and Evil, the insane claim to be able to blaspheme and desecrate everything, even what is most sacred, in the name of an ideology of death, ugliness, and lies that defies Christ and scandalizes those who recognize Him as Lord and God. It is no coincidence that the one sponsoring this revolting carnival is an emissary of the World Economic Forum, Emanuel Macron, who passes off a transvestite as his own wife with impunity, just as Barack Obama is accompanied by a muscular man in a wig. [Msgr. Carlo Maria Viganò]