Bond rout starting to sound market alarm bells
114 comments
·April 9, 2025niklasbuschmann
tim333
I'm not sure the current lot are capable of 2d chess. See penguins for example.
Also see "I’d like to apologize to bricks for calling Peter Retarrdo dumber than a sack of bricks. That was so unfair to bricks." - E Musk
leereeves
I'm afraid the President's critics aren't always capable of critical reading. Consider:
> Ten-year Treasury yields have risen 39 basis points to 4.38% this week alone as prices tumble.
Ok, but the recent high point for 10-year yields was 4.79% on January 13. Why is this 4.38% alarming? And why is a brief intraday spike above 4.5% (in a foreign market) newsworthy? This reads like someone was looking for bad news to report.
kzs0
I think that has to do with the rate at which it moved no?
QuesnayJr
I never even understood what the theory was supposed to be for why it would lower interest rates.
You can only run a trade deficit if the country you are trading with is a net investor. Part of that investment is going to be in the form of bonds. If you force a cut in the trade deficit, you cut the demand for bonds, which lowers their price and raises their interest rate.
procaryote
It's interesting that conspiracy theorists nowadays are looking for hidden plans for how the government might be working in our best interest, in spite of appearances
pjc50
The weird thing is how conservatives get to play both the "federal government is inherently evil" and "look at all the stuff we're doing with our power over the federal government" cards at the same time, often for the same events.
ryandvm
As always, Republicans are their own best argument for limited federal government.
roenxi
Is it weird to be consistent? The "federal government is inherently evil" is a principle that doesn't magically go away when small-government people get in to power.
The argument never was nor will be that [this thing] is bad when [the wrong people] do it; the argument is that [this thing] is bad. There isn't an expectation that a right wing government will somehow transcend the realities of government. The ideal social contract with the politicians - from the liberal part of the right wing - is that they do whatever it is that motivates them to take on the job and that is tolerated to some extent - but in exchange they shrink the size and scope of the government bureaucracy.
Obviously the ideal is a distant dream at this point, but the principle lingers. It is the only realistic option.
pwatsonwailes
Not mutually exclusive. "We're incredibly powerful and government is evil" and "we're absolutely going to use governmental power now we have it to fuck shit up that we don't like", is totally a position those in government can take.
The key is in the idea of governance and who's governing. Any and all governance which has happened by those the people in power don't like (basically the other team) is what is labelled bad.
The only question is, ultimately, is their governance sane and sensible? From the perspective of the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
And no. No it isn't.
milesrout
What a stupid strawman. The claim is "the government is too powerful, that power is easily abused, it wastes your money on pointless 'woke' things, and we are cancelling it all".
Gibbon1
Some guy that writes about politics wrote something that stuck with me 'a lot of people think they are in on the grift'
NikkiA
Conspiracy theories have always just been a form of confirmation bias. They theorise what matches the reality they want to have.
candiddevmike
> in spite of appearances
Or disappearances, in some cases
simmerup
Low interest rates isn’t in the common persons interests, it’s in the interests of those who own and those who have relationships with people close to the money faucet
pjc50
Low rates very much in the interests of people who want to get mortgages.
(Interestingly, because of the very long mortgage duration, US homeowners are very insulated from interest rate shocks. But it will show up in consumer credit, car payments etc.)
Low rates are also expansionary for the economy in general.
griffzhowl
> despite this not making any sense.
Most commentary, for and against, has been exclusively on the economics, and from that perspective it makes little to no sense. But I've seen suggestions in a couple of places that there are relevant "national security" motivations, or to put it bluntly, a greater freedom to wage war - or at least to put oneself in a position where the threat of it would be more realistic. Decoupling the US economy from the rest of the world, but especially from China, makes sense if the strategic cost-benefit analysis sees a significant potential for war with that country. It's a commonplace of international relations, and intuitively obvious, that the more integrated are the economies of two countries, the less likely they are to start wars with each other (no doubt there are exceptions, but as a rule...). That doesn't have to mean anything imminent or indicate concrete plans on the part of US, but it's plausibly a factor in the overall calculations.
In fact, the economic interdependence of the US and China had seemed to be a big reason to remain hopeful that there wouldn't be a war between them, among other reasons of course. Reducing this interdependence seems to destabilize this situation. The unfortunate fact is that I can't see the US military establishment just peacefully allowing China to become more militarily powerful than itself. I'd be happy to hear other perspectives on this, I'm far from an expert and haven't seen this angle discussed much.
EdiX
> It's a commonplace of international relations, and intuitively obvious, that the more integrated are the economies of two countries, the less likely they are to start wars with each other
This is indeed a common way of thinking and intuitively obvious but I think it has also been proven wrong by the war in Ukraine. We sanctioned Russia as hard as we could and it 3 years later they're still there.
Withholding some nebulous service industry from a country that's mostly reliant on primary and/or manufacturing is probably not a strong enough deterrent to a sufficiently motivated political force. It might be that it just puts service industry reliant countries at a disadvantage.
Drone warfare is another piece of the puzzle, both how they are employed in the Ukrainian war as well as in the red sea blockade. The west is also at a disadvantage here compared to, say, China. When was the last time you saw a drone-dragon lightshow outside of Shenzhen?
We thought we had world peace through commerce but it was probably an illusion. I think everyone is rethinking the last 150 years of history right now.
griffzhowl
Just as a matter of logic, you can't prove wrong a rule of thumb that admits exceptions by pointing to an exception. There can always be reasons why, despite economic integration, other factors take precedence, e.g. perceived existential risks can push countries into war despite foreseen economic shocks.
In the case of Russia, while there were subtantial sanctions, it was still trading natural gas to the EU, and I believe they still are. China and India also helped Russia (and themselves) tremendously by buying huge quantities of discounted hydrocarbons, and I think it's plausible that there were indications before the war that such deals would be available.
As an aside about drones, a striking number of new companies established over the last handful of years in several European countries are military drone specialists. By now it's quite obvious why. In the future I guess there'll be a new slew of companies specializing in counter-drone tech.
tarsinge
> the strategic cost-benefit analysis
Is there anything pointing to this supposed thorough analysis really being done behind the doors? Genuinely asking, because for now in my opinion from POTUS communications I don’t make me think there is and this comment is another instance of trying to make something irrational rational.
griffzhowl
No specific evidence, just that the State department and the analysis branches of various agencies still exist and are staffed by professionals whose job it is to conduct such analyses. It's not out of the question that some of these might have filtered up and in some way influence decisions.
If the tariffs remain in place then one result that is guaranteed is that they will reduce trade between the US and the rest of the world, and reduce the most with the most tariffed countries. Whether that's rational or irrational I guess is the question I'm asking, and I'm looking for reasoned opinions either way
leereeves
I think the strategic angle is important, but I doubt it's part of a long-term plan to start a war with China. I think the more likely concern is that if the US becomes too dependent on Chinese manufacturing, China could impose sanctions on the US to control US foreign policy.
And a similar concern applies if the US lacks the manufacturing capability to wage wars with its own resources. Something we already saw that when we ran out of ammo because of the war in Ukraine.
griffzhowl
Thanks, that's probably a more sober and probable assessment. It could make sense for reducing potential Chinese leverage over US. I think if the point were to shore up defense-critical industries, though, then direct support for those industries would make more sense and be considerably less disruptive than these tariffs.
zmmmmm
It seems to me the core issue at hand is that Trump has made a grave strategic error in terms of who really holds more cards in the trade battle, specifically with China.
This bond lever - the threat to abruptly shut off US debt supply - is just one of them. But China can also simply manage far more easily without US imports than the US can manage without Chinese imports. And for any given pain threshold, China can bear that far longer than the US will, because of the authoritarian control the government can exercise.
And then from a geopolitical point of view, even if China loses they win - because the rest of the world fully views this as an act of betrayal and lunacy by the US and the more negative the outcome the better China looks by comparison as a reliable, rule following partner on the world stage.
Basically what I see here is that we have a game of poker where China holds nearly all the cards and Trump is just pushing more and more chips onto the table.
notahacker
There's also the simple fact that there are an awful lot of countries other than the US for China to export to, and some of them are busy looking for new suppliers (especially since lots of "made in the USA" products have tariffs on their constituent parts). And China is much better equipped to change manufacturing priorities, and directionally the shift would be up the value chain....
tim333
>strategic error in terms of who really holds more cards in the trade battle, specifically with China.
I'm not sure who has cards is the problem so much as launching an unnecessary trade battle in the first place.
If you really wanted to onshore industrial production you could have announced sane policy in advance to give people time to build factories in the US etc. without a trade war needed.
sanp
He has bankrupted a few casinos. So, he is pretty good at poker.
optimalsolver
Bankrupting a business where you have a mathematically insurmountable edge is actually impressive.
wahnfrieden
It would be useful for laundering.
ac29
Large casinos are very expensive to build and operate. Even if they have favorable gross margins (the house edge), its pretty easy to lose money net of expenses.
trilbyglens
Also, don't forget to factor in the reality that many Chinese people live at and expect a far lower standard of living than Americans do. Americans by in large are some of the most spoiled and entitled people on this planet who think that getting a new TV every year is a necessity for life
re-thc
> error in terms of who really holds more cards in the trade battle, specifically with China.
This isn't 1v1 though. Maybe there was a time when US vs the rest would work, but now?
The problem is this isn't about import / exports of physical goods.
Once tariffs and bans happen on digital goods, services, etc the US is toast. Has Trump forgotten about them? China is already onto things like US films.
Game studios, Disney, Netflix, Hollywood, etc are all on the firing line.
Even sports like NBA, major league, etc would all crash. A large part of their income is from advertisements and broadcasting deals overseas.
jajko
I can imagine Amazon's AWS (or MS, Google etc) can be banned in Europe in same way Huawei tech was banned. That will hurt US economy.
Even if local alternatives may be lacking now, we can subsidize them for some time so they grow on scale, and thats more than enough for us, we don't need to be cheapest on the market. If we are reliable rest of the world will come to us too. Don't forget US vs EU are 2 mammoth +-comparable economies, and EU has more 100 million additional citizens.
4D chess move would be banning for example ASML machines for any US-related business, let's see how orange man handles his emotional swings.
This is all just a tremendously stupid set of moves. The problem is, people in current US power circles are visibly not smart, you can see it daily. So they inevitably fuck up things, and with massive moves massive fuckery flies to all of us. There is almost 0 chance things will end up as they are publicly spoken of - there are 2 options, dumb as fuck as I wrote or actually some sort of nefarious plan for trump's clan and cronies to get massively richer and suck a lot of money from markets and everybody and their pensions.
Actually I hope its the latter, smart evil can be somewhat reasoned with, pure dumb arrogance not so much you just have to keep licking that ar*ehole and pray for the best.
ndsipa_pomu
> I can imagine Amazon's AWS (or MS, Google etc) can be banned in Europe in same way Huawei tech was banned. That will hurt US economy.
I'm surprised that with the current shenanigans around DOGE and security that Europe hasn't banned them as I don't see how they can be considered GDPR compliant if the data can be plundered whenever Trump and his menagerie decide that they want to look for dissenting opinions.
XajniN
US-related businesses are the only buyers of ASML’s most advanced machines. The 300 million American customers are worth at least 3-4 times as those 400 million in the EU.
So, while China has better cards than the US, the EU has no cards at all.
pwatsonwailes
A strategic error would imply he actually has a strategy. No-one doing anything in American government right now has a strategy.
As long as he gets to play as much golf and watch as much TV as he likes, he doesn't seem to care much. I don't think anyone bought Trump, I think he's just signing whatever is put in front of him and taking credit for it so he can go back to playing golf.
ENGNR
Possibly true.
China has had net positive tariffs against the USA for decades though. Obama tried to use the WTO to label them as a currency manipulator. Trump tried some tariffs the first time around but they just raised theirs higher to keep the imbalance.
Not saying the current strategy is a good one. But America has lost the entire supply chain, racked up huge debts, and a dollar that encourages more and more consumption. Doesn't something have to happen eventually, before the problem gets worse?
zmmmmm
Sure, yes, the fact that the US now is in a weak position built up over decades is just the reality that has to be faced.
The path out of it is painful - starting with reducing US debt, and using a full complement of measures to diversify sources of goods and services (including bringing them domestically where it makes sense). It's something you do over a decade, in partnership with your allies, not a week on your own.
re-thc
> Sure, yes, the fact that the US now is in a weak position built up over decades is just the reality that has to be faced.
It's misinformation to say the US is in a weak position. It's not. It's just gone on to do other things. When we talk about these trade deficits do we include streaming services, television shows, films, games and whatever else?
> (including bringing them domestically where it makes sense)
It doesn't, that's the point. Would you rather have factories with workers below the minimum wage or industries like the NBA?
mdemare
If you want less consumption, and pay off debt, maybe ... raise taxes?
XajniN
No one wants less consumption, you want to pay less taxes. The only way to reduce taxes is to reduce spending.
ajross
> Doesn't something have to happen eventually, before the problem gets worse?
The linked article is LITERALLY pointing out that the "something" you want to "happen" is in fact making exactly the problem you're talking about WORSE.
I don't get it, I just don't get it. We're all getting poorer, very rapidly, on every imaginable axis: higher domestic prices, lower international demand, higher interest rates (the linked article), lower asset valuation in US dollars, loser US dollar value globally. Literally everything is worse. And you're still digging for some kind of coin that might have some shine on the other side that you missed.
pjc50
> dollar that encourages more and more consumption
Under consumerist capitalism, more consumption is generally considered to be a good thing. See all the people complaining about the price of eggs under Biden. I wonder how they're doing.
The tariffs mean that Americans will be able to afford less stuff. That's the stated objective: buy more expensive American goods rather than cheaper imports. It remains to be seen how a country which got started around a riot against import taxes is going to handle this.
ArtTimeInvestor
It's hard to say where the lower bound for the value of American companies is now. Is it zero?
Usually one could estimate the absolute minimum of future earnings.
But the current administration seems to be set on redirecting those earnings away from investors towards the government. And I don't see what could limit the extent to which they do so.
ENGNR
The absolute lower bound is probably domestic consumption?
Which is still a huuuuuuuuuuuuge market
SideburnsOfDoom
When the parts can't be imported, then the question is: domestic consumption of what?
pwatsonwailes
Potatoes?
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intermerda
> It's hard to say where the lower bound for the value of American companies is now. Is it zero?
Come on, it's definitely not zero for most of the companies, even if tons of small businesses go bankrupt.
> But the current administration seems to be set on redirecting those earnings away from investors towards the government. And I don't see what could limit the extent to which they do so.
The objective of the current administration is to implement fascism. Companies can operate and make profit, as long as it’s allowed by the government. See the blackmailing of law firms and tech companies for examples.
Ironically, Thomas Sowell made that argument back when Obama dared to give Americans healthcare - https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/06/12/socialist-.... And he also rang similar alarm bells during the Biden administration - https://www.foxnews.com/media/thomas-sowell-systemic-racism-.... But he has offered nothing more than milquetoast commentary about tariffs being bad when it comes to the current administration.
ArtTimeInvestor
Companies can operate and make profit
jajko
Apple has ~30% margin, so they will just increase prices. If real SHTF with sales (since iphone 16 has had lukewarm sales already and they have 0 new shocking transformative products), they can start chipping down that part, but its a long way to go to reach competition.
Who pays for all this, as always, is common people, getting poorer. More specifically middle class, poor don't buy money-making devices from ie Apple, and rich will either stay rich or get richer if positioned well.
robocat
> Apple that gives billions of dollars to investors (many of them abroad)
Yeah and much of the revenue comes from abroad too. You could at least try to show a balanced view
the U.S. still counts for around 40 percent of Apple’s net salesoldpersonintx
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instagraham
At what point do investors lose confidence that the US govt will be able to make these bond payments in 10 years? Whatever was considered 'business as usual' through decades of republican/democratic presidents is chucked to the bin now.
rebuilder
The US can always pay their dollar-denominated debt by printing more dollars. It wouldn’t be a case of being unable but of being unwilling to pay.
procaryote
of course, losing confidence that the dollar denominated payments will be worth anything near what you expect in non-dollars is functionally very similar to losing confidence that they'll pay
tim333
>"You look at what happened to the curve last night, that was pretty extreme by anyone's metrics - 2s-10s steepening 30 basis points in a few hours, I've certainly never seen that,"
The 2s-10s spread tends to act a bit like brakes for the economy. The 10 year yield is largely down to inflation and the 2 year largely controlled by the federal reserve. They raise the 2 year above the 10 year to slow the economy if you are getting inflation and lower it if the economy looks like slowing too much and going into recession. This looks like people expecting recession.
ac29
> They raise the 2 year above the 10 year to slow the economy
Who is the the "they" here? The government does not set 2 year or 10 year rates, they are priced by auction for new issues and priced by the market for secondary transactions.
leereeves
That's an interesting point. The 2-year yield did drop noticeably on April 3rd, the day after the tariffs were announced. Do you think the Fed did that to offset the impact of tariffs?
ac29
The Fed doesnt set the rate of the 2 year or any other treasury. They effectively put a floor on the price of the shortest dated treasuries by setting the overnight rate, but the longer dated the treasury, the less effect the federal funds rate has on it.
comrade1234
Just so I understand how this works… interest rates on these bonds are going up because of low demand for the bonds? How does this translate to interest rates set by the fed? Do these have to go up to match? .4%?
rich_sasha
Fed sets up very short term interest rates - specifically, overnight lending.
It certainly affects longer-term rates, but only indirectly. In effect, the lending rate for 10 year bonds, say (a common benchmark duration) is set entirely by the market. These are closely related - they operate in the same space - but are in principle independent decision-makers.
As to bond yields vs bond prices, t is easiest to see for new bonds - sold directly by the US govt. Unlike consumer loans, with bonds you know exactly how much you get repaid - periodic coupon and maturity. The variable is the price today paid for the bond. The government hopes to achieve a high price, raising as much cash as it can today (for the same future repayment cash flow), i.e. a low interest rate.
If the buyers of bonds - lenders - show up in small numbers, there is weak demand to buy, and the bond price is low. This translates to a high rate of interest - for a smaller upfront loan, you get more repayment down the line.
The same mechanism works in secondary markets - bond owners trading with each other.
In terms of how this affects the decision-making by the Fed - in principle, not at all. Fed is free to do whatever the like. But in practice, Fed is bound by the same forces as the bond traders, and bond yields are going up suggests the Fed will likewise have to raise rates. Or bond yields go up in anticipation to the Fed having to raise rates, etc.
tim333
It's complicated but I think 10 year rates are going up mostly because people think there'll be inflation and your dollars will buy less in ten years than they would have without the tariffs. Certainly 100% tariffs on China will make stuff from China cost more in the shops.
There may also be some panic selling by speculators or people worried about their bonds - higher market rates makes the prices of bonds fall.
ac29
The narrative I heard yesterday is that bond prices are falling because corporations are selling treasuries to raise cash (to deal with expected increases in prices and/or an economic slowdown, presumably).
When bond prices fall, interest earned on them rises.
intended
There are several things at play.
1) Trump is playing a storyline. The Market place of ideas in America has one side which is under a monopoly. It sets its own prices, decides what information enters and exits, decides what the market SHOULD look like. It manages half the voting population.
This is why “Trump does what he says” resonated. Previous lawmakers played the role on TV, but in back room deals, acted as if reality mattered.
Trump does not. He will continue to not do so, and the ideas sold in the market place that supports him, will continue to sell ideas to support it. Even if they don’t make logical sense.
It’s like science fiction, reality doesn’t matter.
Without addressing the information asymmetry, no democracy can function. No decisions can be made.
This is the nicest way I can put it to people, without being blunt. This has been the work of decades, reaching all the way back to watergate.
2) Jobs are being lost to automation faster than they are lost to outsourcing. China is the last country that will raise its standard of living through manufacturing. India has to pivot to services, to have a hope of doing anything. All of this is human capital intensive.
3) Wealth inequality is the problem - and frankly, if you have money to spare you are simply going to buy assets. This will be bought from people who are increasingly affected by cost of living issues, and have to sell their assets. This means taxes
4) If Americans want a snowballs chance in hell, there need to be special elections around the country in 2025, to take control of congress. Republican senators and congressfolk are threatened by the voting base if they break with Trump, which they wont anyway. The checks and balances are broken, see point 1.
You cannot win in a broken market place. You cannot fix a marketplace of ideas with government power, because that breaks the principle of Free speech. If you are a government who IS in power because of market place monopolies, these rules do not apply to you.
Trump is serious about devaluing the dollar. The only reason he may not, is because the viewers/storyline suggest he shouldn’t.
I will regret making this post, because of the comments it will generate. It is general enough for a million holes to be poked in it. Sure. This is an outline, that covers most of the pieces that are on the board.
joegibbs
I think Trump is kind of like a semi-fictional character: there’s the real guy and then there’s the character he played on shows The Apprentice which are all a bit scripted, in interviews etc as the larger-than-life successful businessman. People voted for the character. But when you play a character like that for your whole life then it becomes who you are, which is why he’d play the storyline.
codingbot3000
One hole to poke into it ;-) There is the growing class of the working poor in the US, and that is something the better off seem to have been ignoring for a while. What I try to say is, that even the status quo ante Trump politics were already quite disconnected from most people's reality. Now Trump's new politics are different in that they negatively impact rich people's reality.
null
ethbr1
Globalists failed to take into account the anger that employment dislocation would generate.
'The labor market will reallocate to productive jobs' doesn't take into account the experience of having ones income security disappear as an industry is shipped overseas, then having to retrain into a new field.
And the US largely didn't fund that, at least in a meaningful, at scale, don't-piss-people-off way.
Those at the top reaped the benefits of free trade; those at the bottom suffered the pain.
Trump (the character) was voted in on the basis of that anger, something the Democrats never seemed to understand.
It'll be curious what the reaction is to serious economic pain in the midterms.
intended
People are rightfully angry. LORD has it taken a long time for people to start talking about how everyone can’t become a coder. However, this seems like common knowledge today, but it was unpopular to think about this back when people were still struggling to deal with the issues that were cropping up.
Trump the character plays the storyline, which is hopefully useful to help people predict what’s happening.
What bugs me is that, the deeper shifts aren’t part of the counter narrative. Automation is eating jobs faster than trade ever did. Lights-out factories exist.
Also - it sucks to get taxed, sure. However it sucks more to not have a working global market. Your wealth is better if you have more people able to buy and make things.
AnimalMuppet
> If Americans want a snowballs chance in hell, there need to be special elections around the country in 2025, to take control of congress.
Perhaps, though I don't see how you're going to get them without changing or violating the Constitution. And changing the Constitution would mean acceptance by those you're trying to get rid of.
Bluntly, the only way this could happen is a civil war - a real, shooting civil war, with bullets and dead bodies. I'm not yet at the point of cheering for that, much as I dislike the current status quo.
> Republican senators and congressfolk are threatened by the voting base if they break with Trump, which they wont anyway.
Then I don't see how a special election in 2025 would help. You say we need a special election to get rid of these folks, but you also say that these folks would be threatened by the voting base if they break with Trump - which to me means that they won't be threatened by the voting base if they stick with Trump.
So I don't think your point 4 offers any hope at all.
null
bilbo0s
Glad someone said it.
A special election is a dumb idea.
iteratethis
My utopian vision to combat the threat of China (dependency, war, etc.) is as follow.
We should form a "Super West". Instead of a divorce between the US and EU and others, the exact opposite should happen: an unbreakable union with shared values, investments, legislation and protections.
Such a unified block could then intelligently "tax" China for industries we consider to be strategic. You can't do this without a unified West. Right now the US is pushing its (former) western allies towards China.
I think a unified block with intelligent protections can sustain an advanced West and create conditions where the working class and middle class is not facing an endless race to the bottom.
This block could also address a pressing issue of global capitalism, the formation of untouchable monopolies and billionaires. End tax loopholes and yes, I'll say it: cap billionaires. Increase minimum wages and offer more job protection. A unified regulation rather than individual countries undermining common interests.
I'm sure that these classic progressive values are unpopular on this forum but I genuinely believe that these values created the middle class in the first place. And the middle class is being eroded and the working class is close to dead.
We should not mimic the race to the bottom (which leads to a birth rate 25% of replacement), we should recreate the post war West. A ordinary person should be able to start a family, own a home, etc. If we can't do that, nothing matters.
The way to achieve that is cooperation, strict shared values and regulations and a whole lot of technology.
The West's trajectory where life kept getting better stopped in the 90s. We need to bring it back.
roenxi
> The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield , the globe's benchmark safe-haven anchor...
The US government is ~37 trillion dollars in debt and rising. They're not going to do anything to cut spending until they hit a crisis so massive that they just can't spend any more. Which is going to have to be a shocker of a crisis given how they've handled the last couple. Raising taxes seems to be off the table too.
While it is true that US treasuries are low risk, they are low risk in the way that lending the broke town drunk money are low risk - you can come up with accurate estimates of how likely you are to get the money back. The real mystery has for some time been why people persist in feeding the US government money voluntarily. The math doesn't seem to be ambiguous, the value lent can't be paid back in real terms. Foreign holders of these things are engaging in charity.
procaryote
The absolute amount of debt isn't as interesting as it's percentage of GDP, or as percentage of revenue. If US productivity improves faster than its debt grows, the debt becomes less of a burden relatively.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S
Of course, the long term trend there isn't great either. It was OK until the financial crisis of 2008, after which it grew to around 100% debt to GDP, which is usually seen as a warning level. Then it grew again very sharply during the pandemic and today is around 121%.
The apparent pattern is that it grows during recessions, but stays pretty flat during good times, and as the current administration seems to want to have recessions for fun, confidence among lenders may have been shaken
tim333
There's almost no repayment risk - the government will pay the dollars stipulated. There is an inflation risk - that the dollars will be worth less.
roenxi
Do a walk through of what you're implying there - you're suggesting the US is going to lump trillions of dollars worth of inflation losses onto the voting public to protect foreign investors. At a time when the public are extremely twitchy and sensitive to price rises.
There is a clear risk that the US will instead lump trillions of losses on foreign investors and attempt to protect the purchasing power of their voters. It isn't like they're fooling anyone either way - they borrowed a bunch and can't pay it back. They can pretend they paid it back but the markets are going to respond to the magnitude of the losses and not the excuses. The leadership may as well let the bulk of the damage fall on people who don't vote in US elections - there isn't any particular reason to do otherwise.
The US could choose to tank their own currency but it'd be more orderly and the incentives certainly could be aligned to formally default regardless.
ac29
> to protect foreign investors
There is a common misconception that most US debt is held by foreign investors, but that is wrong - 80% of treasuries are held domestically.
null
t420mom
Not charity - they are paying tribute
roenxi
Even that argument is starting to fall apart. What are the theatres where the US is supposed to be able to put on a strong showing? It doesn't seem to be Europe, they've got war on their doorstep and if anyone thinks the US is helping they should reflect on their reasoning. It doesn't seem to be the Middle East, the US has made the region less safe. They're not going to be able to act effectively against China given the trouble Russia has been giving them.
The US can't afford to extract tribute from people. It isn't powerful enough, relatively speaking.
SideburnsOfDoom
> Even that argument is starting to fall apart.
Yes, that's what's happening. They were paying tribute, based on a mutually beneficial status quo. Now they're asking if they should continue to.
pjc50
> What are the theatres where the US is supposed to be able to put on a strong showing? It doesn't seem to be Europe, they've got war on their doorstep and if anyone thinks the US is helping they should reflect on their reasoning
I think you have this backwards: the US was helping considerably, and then got taken over by pro-Russian conspiracy theorists.
But the bond stuff isn't "tribute" or nationalism; remember, it's being made by private sector investors, not national governments. Fairly straightforward calculation: which way is the exchange rate expected to move? Interest rate? Risk of default?
Up till now the US offered moderate interest rates, favourable direction of exchange rate movement, and imperceptible risk of default. There's still no reason to default other than madness and a desire to strap on the suicide vest and become Argentina.
t420mom
The Middle East is less safe because the US made an example of Saddam when he offered to sell oil for Euros instead of US dollars. That's a classic example of an empire ensuring the tribute continues to flow, at least until the current Emperor decides receiving tribute is a bad deal and demands every country in the world stops sending it.
Many people here were so confident a few days ago that the tariffs were just some 4d chess to get interest rates down, despite this not making any sense.