The clock is ticking. As of final Thursday, the Treasury Department’s money steadiness was at a six-year low of lower than $39 billion. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen now reckons that the federal government will run out of money on June 5.

Why music stars can’t say no to the “private”

Private gigs — “privates,” in music business lingo — are seemingly popping up in every single place, from charity galas in Manhattan to luxurious resort openings within the Persian Gulf. Bankrolled by the ultrarich and corporations, these intimate star-studded performances are off-limits to most people.

The personal has grow to be a dependable moneymaker for each chart-toppers and performers properly previous their prime, Evan Osnos writes in an entertaining, f-bomb-filled article in The New Yorker that opens with Flo Rida, the rapper, enjoying a bar mitzvah in Lincolnshire, an prosperous Chicago suburb.

For years, the world of privates was dominated by growing old crooners, a class identified delicately as “nostalgia performers.” Jacqueline Sabec, an leisure lawyer in San Francisco, who has negotiated many private-gig contracts, advised me, “Artists used to say no to these all the time, because they just weren’t cool.”

But misgivings have receded dramatically. In January, Beyoncé did her first present in additional than 4 years — not in a stadium of screaming followers however at a brand new resort in Dubai, incomes a reported $24 million for an hourlong set.

Few flip down the cash from doing a non-public these days, with Jennifer Lopez, Maroon 5 and Eric Clapton all agreeing to them. Even youthful artists don’t concern any stigma from what one agent stated is finally a state of affairs the place “it’s a convention or a party, and you just happen to be making noise at one end of it.”

But some proceed to withstand, Mr. Osnos writes, together with Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift and, “for reasons that nobody can quite clarify,” AC/DC.