Normally, investors rush into Treasurys at a whiff of economic chaos but now they are selling them as not even the lure of higher interest payments on the bonds is getting them to buy. The freak development has experts worried that big banks, funds and traders are losing faith in America as a good place to store their money.
“The fear is the U.S. is losing its standing as the safe haven,” said George Cipolloni, a fund manager at Penn Mutual Asset Management. “Our bond market is the biggest and most stable in the world, but when you add instability, bad things can happen.”
That could be bad news for consumers in need of a loan — and for President Donald Trump, who had hoped his tariff pause earlier this week would restore confidence in the markets.
This is arguably bigger news than the stock market.
It definitely is. If bonds don’t sell, or at least no longer sell cheap, then the US might get bigger problems with their budget.
If US Bonds are no longer the de facto safe haven asset…
The USD is no longer the world’s de facto reserve currency.
That means that even if all the tariffs were rescinded, Trump croaked and somehow JD Vance took a ‘be at least somewhat more competent and less stupid’ pill, and never reinstated them…
Well it would mean the dollar would crash against other currencies, we wouldn’t be able to import anywhere near as much, and US international debt payments as a percentage of the yearly budget would climb fast.
… And then that could spiral into both massive austerity at home, and/or ‘lol we are defaulting on our international debt’ either by formal declaration, or… basically hyperinflation.
That means that even if all the tariffs were rescinded, Trump croaked and somehow JD Vance took a ‘be at least somewhat more competent and less stupid’ pill, and never reinstated them…
It’s too late for that. The US has shown that any appearance of stability can be upended at the whim of whatever singular person is president at the time, and there are no systems in place to prevent that. The idea of “checks and balances” has been shown to be a lie.
Trump signed a trade agreement with Canada and Mexico last time he was president and immediately violated them at the start of this term. He’s been constantly back and forth on tariffs with no warning. The word of the US has become completely worthless.
It doesn’t matter if all Republicans suddenly realize “this is bad”, remove Trump, and put someone stable in his place. The world had been shown that regardless of how stable the current president is, in 4 years the citizens could vote for a complete idiot (and I remind you Trump did win the popular vote. The citizens voted for this) and the market is in turmoil again.
Other countries aren’t unstable idiots of course and aren’t going to tear up existing agreements (because they value stability) but they sure as fuck won’t be renewing any contracts (at least not without far less favorable terms for the US and escape hatches incase another idiot is put in charge) and will be making contracts with other nations instead.
Trump has killed the US and a financial superpower, the US just doesn’t know it yet. It won’t be felt until existing contracts expire and new ones are signed.
You sound smart.
You can pack your stuff and see yourself out or you can roll the dice with our staff of 19 year old tuff bois.
republicunts plans to finance rich people tax cuts with additional debt in shambles
Bond sales are only politically connected to the budget; not financially. Not selling bonds would in no way hinder congress from passing a budget.
I’m no expert but it seems to me if the yields have to go up to get buyers, it’s like raising the interest rates on a loan. You can still get the loan but you have to buy less car/house if you want to afford the payments.
Not really. US debt is held in those bonds, and it is a perpetual game of selling and repaying them. If they don’t sell anymore, the old ones have still to be repaid - or default. You don’t want to experience this.
The prices and yields of bonds have an inverse relationship:
If price goes down, yield goes up.
The yield is also known as the interest rate.
This interest rate * the purchase price is paid by the US government to the bondholder at the end of the duration of its term.
When you look at the US Federal budget, and see the amount that goes toward making debt payments…
This, bonds, are a very big part of what you are looking at.
If the interest rate on US debt instruments are going up… that means more and more of the budget has to be allocated toward debt repayment.
While yes, extremely directly, bond yields rising doesn’t… mechanically make the passing of a budget impossible in some kind of procedural way…
It very much makes the stakes higher as now our growing debt problem is growing even faster.
I sold some bonds 3 days ago. I just don’t trust this administration won’t default on something in the next 6 months. Or do something else to drop out AAA rating.
I know this is the kind of hyperbole that leads to markets crashing spectacularly, but honestly, sell your bonds, get the fuck out of the U.S., this place is cooked. DO NOT RELY ON THE U.S. FOR ANYTHING IMPORTANT for the foreseeable future.
Centrists strangled any hope of mitigating this disaster by spending all the democrat/left’s political capital on meaningless handwringing about the parlimentarian saying no to higher minimum wages and whether well should we be so radical so as to suggest free healthcare… and well should we really keep feeding the poor isn’t that handouts?
Now centrists in U.S. culture learn why the leftists they have been angrily tone policing for being too negative where just describing in a sad voice the future that was heading for us like a freight train, covered in fascists hooting and hollering.
It is going to be bad, and I am very sad.
Yeah, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do rather than just holding cash (cause inflation is likely to go up). But bonds don’t feel safe, I think the best bet is looking to assets outside the US, but that’s exactly what this article is calling out, the US doesn’t feel safe anymore.
I’m debating precious metals or possible even Bitcoin since that’ll probably get pumped by the admin announcing the government buying it. Problem is they might try and sell off gold to do it which would probably drive down the price of that.
But I’m sure there won’t be any insider trading of those before it happens /s
This is by design. They want to destabilize the US. There is a lot of money and influence in it for them
I guess I picked a bad time to stop huffing glue.
Oh come on, “Freak” sell off makes it sound like there’s some mystery as to what caused this when it’s blindingly obvious what the problem is here. The markets, and far more importantly all decent and rational people throughout the world, won’t and shouldn’t have any confidence in anything as long as Donald Trump is president. The only thing that starts to fix this mess is his resignation or impeachment (and that is only a start, investigations criminal charges and sentences amendments to laws etc. all need to happen too).
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
We got powerful armed unions after the Ludlow massacre/10 day war, and workers rights/min wage/40hr work week after triangle factory fire and the ensuing riots.
Blacks got the right to vote after the death of MLK and the ensuing riots and organized violence of the Black Panthers.
It’s sad how suppressed our educations are in this police state of a country.
It’s not really a “freak” event when the causes are blatantly clear and self-inflicted.
I am very annoyed that this use of ‘freak’ and further corruption of the term ‘black swan event’ have just gotten completely common place.
A black swan event is supoosed to be something completely impossible to have been predicted before hand because you didn’t have enough knowledge to even understand there was a kind of risk you were not accounting for.
An ‘unknown unknown’, to use the only useful idea Donald Rumsfeld ever came up with.
… This bond sell off is utterly predictable, unless you are completely brainwashed into a delusional level of normalcy bias and complacency.
All you have to do is realize the US is acting like an unstable dictatorship… which it very obviously is… and this is an easily predictable outcome for anyone with a decent knowledge of macroecon theory/history.
