Happy Monday; let’s talk about interest rates.

The Federal Reserve meets this week to set its key interest rate, which has all kinds of ripple effects on the broader credit market. Smart money says the Fed will stay put, then hike in December. A bunch of other central banks are meeting this week too; here’s our preview.

But debt is already getting more expensive for artificial intelligence companies, and Elon Musk warned over the weekend that many companies renting computing power will soon shake out or consolidate. Meanwhile, more diversified AI companies like Microsoft and Musk’s SpaceX are likely already in your retirement account.

We’ll talk about all that below, plus Anthropic’s forthcoming IPO, but first let’s look at the state of government debt.  — Tony Wagner, newsletter editor

If you want to loan the United States government some money for exactly one year, as of Friday, Oct. 23, the Treasury will pay you a little over 4%. If, on the other hand, you’re willing to tie your money up for ten years by buying a 10-year Treasury note, you’ll get just a hair under 5%.

That’s usually how it goes with government bonds: Short-term rates are lower, and long-term rates are higher. But lately, investors are demanding to be paid even higher rates on long-term government debt.

Treasurys are some of the safest investments out there. If you buy one, you’re going to get your money back when it matures, plus interest. But if interest rates happen to go up, while you’re holding that bond, a Treasury can lose value.

And because of that risk, investors typically require some form of compensation. This is known as the term premium: a little extra yield to compensate investors for the chance that a bond’s value will fall over the long-term.

The longer an investor’s money is tied up in a bond, the bigger a term premium they demand. Imagine you buy a 30-year bond, for instance.

“All kinds of things can happen in the meantime,” said Emanuel Moench, a professor at the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management in Germany. “So the 30-year bond, typically, we think of as having a higher term premium.”

Moench created a model that estimates term premiums have been rising over the last five years. Over the past year, one particular premium on 10-year bonds has almost doubled, from around half a percent to a full percentage point.

John Canavan, lead market analyst at Oxford Economics, said some of that is because investors are concerned about what’ll happen if the government floods the market with new Treasurys to finance the national debt.

“All of this borrowing raises the question of will investors have enough cash flow in order to easily absorb all this debt,” he said.

If demand for government bonds doesn’t keep up with supply, Canavan said bond values might fall.

“And given that risk, we’re going to require some extra yield in response,” he said.

Another factor pushing up term premiums this year is the war in the Middle East, and all of the risks it’s generating.

Your retirement or pension will likely be exposed to Anthropic when it goes public — because most people already are invested in AI in some form or fashion. The Magnificent Seven tech stocks make up a third of the total market cap of the S&P 500, and loads of bonds are going to the AI sector too.

So what’s that mean for the average person’s retirement savings if all this investment in emerging technology doesn’t work out? We had McCoy on “Marketplace” to talk about it.

I know some of you spend approximately the runtime of “You Can See Everything” on Reels, but that’s not what I’m talking about.

Instagram announced as part of an ongoing rollout to smart TVs, it would test letting some creators upload “Features” — horizontal videos up to 90 minutes long. It’s an intriguing development coming on the tail of “Obsession” and “Backrooms,” two hits from filmmakers who started on YouTube. But unlike YouTube, Instagram isn’t paying creators.