It's one of the most popular predictors of the scary scary recession. In short, borrowing money for longer periods of time should cost more than borrowing money

It's one of the most popular predictors of the scary scary recession. In short, borrowing money for longer periods of time should cost more than borrowing money for shorter periods of time (even if you normalize both values to percent per year). There is also an explanation that is more mechanistic and related to central bank activities. However, sometimes the opposite is true, and that is the "inversion". Here's a nice explainer from the FT: https://ig.ft.com/the-yield-curve-explained/ https://ig.ft.com/the-yield-curve-explained/ And here is just the chart (which is the top result for "2s10s"), click on Max: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10Y2Y https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10Y2Y BTW, there is something very similar in commodities markets - contango and backwardation. Contango comes from some old British word that's similar to "continuation" and describes the usual situation for non-perishable goods where if you, a buyer, want to delay the delivery of goods then I, the supplier, will charge you a little extra for using my storage space. This little extra is called "continuation fee", or "contango". It shows up in modern commodity markets like the CME on price vs time-of-delivery curves. But sometimes the markets are in backwardation and earlier deliveries are more expensive than late deliveries. PS. "2s" meaning "the twos", meaning "two-year Treasury bonds"; it's a common abbreviation.