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The treasury bond mess: is this the demise of the US as a safe haven?
- exceptione 1mo ago> And he hinted at a novel approach to monetary policy, suggesting that “the ultimate intervention is our military”. Yes, that was both funny and tragic. But it also demonstrates why smart people made him president: he is beyond perfect for redirecting attention. By burning the institutions down and by severing international relations, a certain class of people can finally disable the corrective and limiting mechanisms that keep them in check. Even if that means the whole country needs to be burned down. Zero sum in business, zero sum in church, zero sum in state governance.
- snarfy 1mo ago"Give us money to pay for our military or else our military will intervene"
- pjc50 1mo agoThe military threats include burning down other countries. Now, people accept the "no angel" defense for Iran and Venezuela. Just like a cop is allowed to execute someone in the street if they have a criminal record. But now we have to work out how serious the threats against Western countries are, or whether they're just routine Trump bullshit for social media. Is there a real prospect of the use of force against Canada, or Canadian nationals in the US? Is there a limit to the trade sanctions? If the US can sanction individual ICC members, can't they exert pressure on Carney by debanking him too?
- exceptione 1mo agoWe know from crime that the only way to solve a crisis is to escalate, because that is what zero-sum dynamics basically forces one too. In that process, everything becomes a tool and there is barely anything that is off-limits. Putting aside the possible change of guards with the other party getting into power, the USA are long-term heading to a serious crisis. The dems were able to reduce deficits in the past (a bit surprisingly because that contradicts the narrative), but I think their space for maneuvering is getting increasingly small. There is a serious possibility that notwithstanding efforts to save the ship the long term trend cannot be reversed because so many critical processes had been set in motion, about which control has been lost. What happens after a decade? You can do the math. A disgruntled electorate want final solutions to an increasingly heavier crisis. It takes real states(wo)men to re-architect the USA in favor of the public. Also, if you ever open 'social' media or regular media even, you could experience first-hand how hard it has become to reach the public. The vested interests are not willing to give up their power.
- rawgabbit 1mo agoWhen a debt crisis occurs, there is only one good option and many bad ones. The good option is the debt holders realize they need to compromise and are willing to forgive part of the debt for proper governance. ie. forgive part of the debt as long as the US adheres to a strict budget which involves raising taxes and cutting services. And no more giving out tax breaks and tax holidays as if they were free. All the other options are infinitely worse. The problem is that such a deal is political suicide. MAGA will run on repealing the deal like they ran on dismantling Obama care. They are the party of financial self immolation.
- pjc50 1mo agoSuch a deal is basically not possible. See the Argentina "pari passu" fiasco. Because US T-bills are everywhere. They are, to use a Claude-ism, load bearing for the world economy. There is no "adults outside the room" who can intervene to fix the situation. Either Americans sort things out among themselves, or they will end up with the traditional Latin American solution to a debt crisis: hyperinflation. Which some of the right have been salivating about ever since FDR.
- rawgabbit 1mo agoGold hit $4700 today. Hyperinflation looks like where we are headed.
- AnimalMuppet 1mo agoWhy blame the right? FDR changed the gold peg from $20/ounce to $35, thereby devaluing the dollar. That wasn't ongoing like a hyperinflation would be, but it's still the same effect. And nobody serious accuses FDR of being part of "the right".
- digitaltrees 1mo agoThe window is still pretty large. Raising taxes at low to moderate levels would be sufficient to close the gap and restore confidence in debt without slowing the economy. The problem is that every time democrats make progress republicans pass massive tax cuts. Four successive republican administrations have passed massive tax cuts. Trump alone is responsible for 30% of all debt. The problem is that voters punish anyone who raise taxes. The first bush lost reelection because he broke his “read my lips no new taxes promise” when he was actually trying to behave responsibly.
- chrisjj 1mo agoNext he'll be bombing US states guilty of 'election fraud'.
- samrus 1mo agoI wouldnt call those people smart. They might be playing a game optimally in the short term, but they are ruining a long term system. And i dont mean centuries, but decades. They need the general population 20 years from now to have grown up in a safe and prosperous environment with good education accross the board and the country to have the global influence necessary to maintain all that. They're throwing all that away for more cornering more of a market for the next 5-10 years. Its kinda dumb
- binary132 1mo agoThe prevailing mentality seems to be that if we don’t win in the next three quarters it will be such a catastrophe that there won’t be a future at all.
- ifwinterco 1mo agoThose people aren't really "Americans" in any meaningful sense, even if they happen to hold US passports. Once they're done with the US they'll just move onto the next country, same as they moved onto the US once the British empire was done. They're just locusts
- BLKNSLVR 1mo agoI don't disagree that they're locusts, but 'American' has been leaning heavily in the same direction as locusts for a long while. That's why they currently hold US Passports, the most fertile breeding ground.
- anonymars 1mo agoFrom Network (1976): You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU... WILL... ATONE! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that... perfect world... in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.
- roenxi 1mo agoI don't think we can say this one is a distraction - historically the US dollar has involved the "secret" deal [0] where the US was trading military protection in the Middle East for having a major energy supplier only accept dollars. Probably some other similar shenanigans going on that aren't public too. I imagine the US's poor showing against Iran and the implied inability to coerce medium powers is a factor in the decision making of the serious buyers of US treasuries. It has never been entirely clear how much value the US military's ability to control global trade really backed the dollar; but Trump's style is to hit people with every possible threat and reason to do what he wants in case it helps. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrocurrency#1970_to_2000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrocurrency#1970_to_2000
- sghiassy 1mo ago… and yet America voted for him a second time. I just don’t get why
- watwut 1mo agoProject 2025 ain't gonna implement itself.
- DangitBobby 1mo agoEven now when things have gone so far off the rails, the average American knows basically nothing about what's going on. There's a ton of information but no reliable way to split it from misinformation, so people just glom on to whatever aligns with their worldview. Our future feels pretty hopeless to me.
- mmooss 1mo agoNothing is happening because you aren't doing anything and are even spreading hopelessness! Imagine someone at work or on a team who acted that way. It's psyops for the opposition. It is the behavior of losers (sorry). The main obstacle for the opposition is itself.
- GolfPopper 1mo agoThere is no meaningful "opposition" at the national level. There's not even a pretense of it. The same Democratic Party that failed to hold Reagan and Bush responsible for Iran-Contra, that failed to hold Bush responsible for torture and domestic spying, that failed to hold Trump responsible for a coup and stealing secrets, that did nothing with the Epstein files, is not going to "oppose" anything. They'll slap on a fresh coat of paint, say calming things to the investors, and keep right on with business as usual.
- AnimalMuppet 1mo agoI think the Democrats tried to hold Trump responsible for the coup attempt. They just botched the timing. They delayed the court cases until late 2023/early 2024, maybe for political reasons, to tar Trump with it closer to the 2024 election. That backfired spectacularly, as Trump was able to manufacture enough delay to drag the cases out to late 2024, where they were held to not cause election interference. And then, after that, he had immunity while in office.
- datsci_est_2015 1mo agoI’m reminded of the recent study claiming that British imperial activities had a negligible impact on the quality of life for non-elites, but was enormously enriching for the elites. Tough to take entirely seriously due to no perfect control sample, but it’s at least provocative to me to consider this: all this pain and suffering for what? The worst person you can imagine being able to piss in a gold toilet and grope women (and men) of a questionable age with coerced consent? From 1945 to Reagan may have been one of the most extraordinary times for the “middle class” of any nation in the history of the world. The distribution of wealth kept pace with the advances of efficiency. What a privilege it must be to have been an adult in a non-discriminated class during that period, and the honeymoon phase that kept steam until the Great Recession.
- jmward01 1mo agoI think it is past time to admit that a lot of the roots of our current issues, both culturally and economically, can be traced back to the Regan era. Culture wars have always been a thing, but 'the moral majority' throwing out reason for emotion and economic policy glorifying the short term gain of the rich because it will 'eventually' benefit the poor got a real boost under Regan and then Bush. The results of that, unlike the promised economics, have been trickling down ever sense.
- BLKNSLVR 1mo agoThe winners of WWII basked in their own glory for far too long, constantly looking back at a grand victory instead of looking forward to ensure a grand future. The march of technology papered over a lot of cracks, but the cracks keep on growing.
- burnte 1mo agoYep, they were the vanguard of "fuck you I need to get mine at all costs."
- bigbadfeline 1mo ago[dead]
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- dofm 1mo agoSmart people helped him be the candidate. People who didn't mind that he is a racist, xenophobic, anti-semitic, bigoted philandering malignant narcissist grifter made him president. Intelligent lawyers degraded themselves to make it happen again. I do think trying to backdate the idea that intelligent people are behind Trump's rise because supposedly intelligent people are now on the Trump train for their own expedient reasons ignores that the beginning of the Trump movement was grounded in his explicitly bigoted and racist proclamations. It's not like he came down the escalator with any pitch to intelligent people. Appeals to hatred, bigotry, conspiracy theories and racism were a key plank of how he drove his candidacy from the very beginning. Enough Americans chose this revolting human being as their avatar to make it happen. Twice. Nobody was conned by intelligent people: they went along with the racist carnival huckster.
- GolfPopper 1mo agoI was in college in the run-up to Trump's election. I knew a lot of left-leaning people who were very tired of the neo-liberal status quo, and who were willing to put their time and money into making Obama's promised but undelivered change into something real. And then along came Donald Trump, and, "OMG look how awful he is! Vote Blue No Matter Who!" It's a sucker's game, and the voters on both sides of the spectrum get taken again and again and again. "Sure, Our Politicians are Bad, but the Other Side's Politicians are Much Worse!" Voting for the lesser evil for decades is just taking the scenic route to Hell as a country. Meanwhile, no matter who's in charge, there's always just enough votes in Congress for military spending and corporate bailouts, but never enough votes for any sort of significant populist economics or meaningful regulation that might push back against the billionaire/big corporation stranglehold on the country and government. (President Obama, with a working Democratic majority, delivered... a national health care plan designed by the right-libertarian Cato Institute and pioneered at the state level by his Republican opponent Mitt Romney.)
- dofm 1mo ago> And then along came Donald Trump, and, "OMG look how awful he is! Vote Blue No Matter Who!" And that would have been the correct choice. Because he's not just the worst person to be president, he was very clearly, even in 2015, among a small handful of the worst people with any kind of following to ever run for the job (maybe not as bad as David Duke, at least as bad as Lyndon LaRouche). It's really simple: if there are two candidates with a chance of running for the job and only one of them is very evidently a malignant narcissist, you pick the other one. Regardless of their policies! Trump was easily identifiable as erratic, self-centred and profoundly dangerous and that has been borne out. (You'll get no argument from me that Mitt Romney got a raw deal both from timing and from the old school of political rough-and-tumble, especially seeing as he's often to the left of Gavin Newsom)
- classified 1mo agoExactly. He and his accomplices don't give a flying fuck whether the whole country goes down in flames, because they already have fuck-you money, and they're only getting richer. That's why arguing about how incompetent, demented, or whatever he is misses the point completely. And the "incompetence" of his underlings doing the work of destruction is a feature, not a bug in this scheme. The chaos they sow is the perfect cover to do what they want unhindered while everyone else is distracted. It would be beautiful if it weren't so unfathomably evil.
- flanked-evergl 1mo agoWhich institutions has Trump burned down?
- financetechbro 1mo agoThe federal government? Ever heard of DOGE??
- flanked-evergl 1mo ago[flagged]
- nick49488171 1mo agoI'm not a psychopath but how are we supposed to fix the deficit without something like DOGE that can cut programs.
- forestry 1mo agoMost spending is legislated and can’t be cut without congressional approval.
- budman1 1mo agoResponsible budget from congress. Social Security / Medicare need to reduce benefits and increase taxation. Let's start with the easy one; social security taxes. Make every dollar of income be taxed for social security. If you make over $150k (pick a number, I don't care where it is), then 100% of your social security is taxed as income. Or maybe tax it a little more. Cut the federal government. (mini-doge, for lack of a better term). Stop the growth in the budget of each department. Pull back 10%; done sanely by assessing what the department is doing, what it is required to do, and what it doesn't need to do. Cut the military. Do we need both a land based and sea based nuclear deterrent? Get rid of 1 of them. Cut active duty strength 10%. Stop ridiculous projects like "B-52 Re-engine and Radar update". (So, I am going to put money into my 1950 ford, when I can buy a 2026 model (B21) at a reasonable price... this is absurd) Raise taxes. Not a lot, but raise them. Bring in more revenue. You don't have to eat the rich, just reach a little deeper into their pockets. (also, I don't care how you define rich. Pick a number) Do all of these in a moderate amount, and you will be OK. The yearly deficit will shrink, and some of the outstanding bonds will be paid. It doesn't have to be fixed in a year; a 20 year plan, executed, is fine.
- gos9 1mo agoorange man bad sure but pretending military intervention isn’t an established part of monetary policy is disingenuous
- nsvd2 1mo agoThe bottom line is that the country cannot spend more than it makes in tax income indefinitely and anyone who says otherwise is delusional. Unfortunately, I think the reckoning for all this debt will come sooner than many people expect.
- dgellow 1mo agoI think countries can, but there is a limit to how much debt you can have. It’s fine and even likely better for countries to have some deficit, but not $40T while also starting a war with Iran and imposing random tariffs that destabilize the world economy (+ attacking your allies, and all the other things Trump has done over the past decade, including adding an insane amount to the deficit)
- Krutonium 1mo agoFor anyone not aware just how much: A quarter of it. A quarter of all US debt happened under Trump.
- rich_sasha 1mo agoSort of yes and no. I don’t think indefinite spending was ever on the cards. But if other countries tried to maintain the levels of US deficit / debt, they were given far less lenience from investors, in pressure / yields. This was because US was seen as, on the whole, fiscally responsible, very productive, and safer from shocks - to the point that when the US mortgage crisis exploded, the safe haven for assets was… the US. As these assumptions are challenged, the US is waking up to what the European old economies experienced following 2008. Increasingly yields, increasing costs of borrowing etc. If you’re reliably printing good GDP growth, higher level of debt may be good as it gives you more leverage, and drives more growth in turn. But leverage is a multiplier and it isn’t free, so if the engine sputters, you might find yourself falling out of the car at a greater speed…
- mono442 1mo agoA debt crisis like in eurozone countries in 2008 is very unlikely to happen in the US. For it to happen, it would require the fed working against the us government.
- mono442 1mo agoA garbage article. Yields went down after the housing bubble in 2007 because the central bank interest rates were lowered, not because the investors decided to flock to a safe asset. Yields are high because the inflation is also running high and it doesn't like it will come down anytime soon so the central bank interest rates will also be kept at a higher level. Long term bonds can be replaced with short term bonds which are constantly rolled over. The bond yields are pricing in the future interest rates, nothing more.
- eigenspace 1mo ago[flagged]
- PowerElectronix 1mo agoselling stocks and buying bonds in a recession where interest rates go down (so bonds are priced higher) and expected revenue for most sectors go down is a no brainer. Agree, but there's also the expectation of future debt. A bigger debt means a bigger issuance of bonds, so the new supply-demand equilibrium moves the rates higher as it's the only way to convince investors to allocate more to bonds. Technically, yes, but if you create demand for long term bonds and create supply for short term ones, you'll flatten the yield curve and pay long term yields for short term durations.
- timacles 1mo agoWe are in a different phase of Capitalism, real interest rates will be kept low mechanically. Nominal Inflation rate will always be lied about. Bonds holders will lose value by design. The governments and central banks across the world have no other choice. Corporations and big money have robbed our world of capital and are now changing the game to pull up the ladder behind them
- PowerElectronix 1mo agoThey can always reduce deficit and just play the game as it's supposed to be played.
- glimshe 1mo ago[flagged]
- cjs_ac 1mo agoThe vaguepost by Bessent in today’s Financial Times looked pretty weak: https://www.ft.com/content/cb865200-1a06-40be-86a3-10ee2bb05804 https://www.ft.com/content/cb865200-1a06-40be-86a3-10ee2bb05...
- SanjayMehta 1mo agoHe sounds like an extortionist. I particularly liked the reference to "America's tolerance." https://archive.ph/2026.08.24-074023/https://www.ft.com/content/cb865200-1a06-40be-86a3-10ee2bb05804 https://archive.ph/2026.08.24-074023/https://www.ft.com/cont...
- pu_pe 1mo agoAlmost everything this administration does is inflationary. You cannot have tariffs, oil crisis, tax cuts, high debt spending without long-term investors getting worried that they won't meaningfully get their money back in 10 or 20 years from now.
- usrnm 1mo agoHow much of it is "the current administration" and how much is simply the continuation of a much longer trend? The US has been at war with this or that country in the Middle East for as long as I'm alive and I'm almost 40. Same with tax cuts, high spending and so on. It's easy to blame everything on Trump (or Reagan), but it seems to be a much broader issue with the whole system
- snarf21 1mo agoYes, this has been going on a long time. However, I think there is quite a bit of data about who is in charge or the White House and Congress when taxes go down/up or the deficit goes down/up, etc. It doesn't take more than one online search to see a very distinct pattern.
- thenatureboy 1mo ago[flagged]
- cowboylowrez 1mo agoHehe its not that complicated, if it were, Trump wouldn't have bothered taking on the job haha according to the school of thought I've gathered from conservatives, its "loot or be looted". Not much cognitive effort needed here, "extremely complicated" lol u can miss me with that dodge
- smallmancontrov 1mo agoIf the simple facts don't tell the story you want to hear, you'll just pile on complexity until you can't hear it. But the facts remain.
- jmclnx 1mo agoAll that has to happen to fix this is taxes. The ultra rich tax's need to be raised to a level the US had before Reagan. Instead the people running the US want the poor and middle-class to pay for everything and enrich the rich even more. Until that is fixed, the US will end up as a banana republic with lots of nukes. > rates on mortgage loans and other long-term lending across the economy – are walloping his popularity, helping freeze the housing market Looking like 2007 again ? The GOP loves flirting with creating a massive depression.
- hattmall 1mo ago2007 was very different. There was an entire industry propped up by artificially manufactured speculative demand. This was a real industry that produced loads of jobs,drove downstream industries and had significant involvement from a huge portion of the population.
- zdragnar 1mo ago> All that has to happen to fix this is taxes. The ultra rich tax's need to be raised to a level the US had before Reagan. What was inflation like before Regan?
- mmooss 1mo agoWhat does inflation have to do with the tax rate for the wealthiest? Also, IIRC I read the climate cooled a little in the 1970s - can we attribute that to the tax rate too?
- 1mo ago
- ck2 1mo agoremember the utter destruction of the economy by the Bush administration? everyone was so relieved when he was finally flown away for the last time by Marine One, he couldn't do any more damage well this is round two, just keep voting for this kinda of garbage corruption pray for a full impeachment because otherwise two more years is going to leave a burning dumpster fire of a country (but Vance maybe even worse) his drapes! his golden statues! his ballroom! his ARC! his helipad! his flagpoles! his image on passports, gold coins, $250 bill, park passes! 100 foot banners of his image on federal buildings! renaming warships and airports after him while still in office ONE BILLION DOLLARS in taxpayer funded renovations for all his nonsense in DC ANOTHER BILLION DOLLARS stolen from nuclear missile maintenance for his QatarForceOne $6 Million per day in pardons and other grift $2 Million every weekend for his golf outings go on, tell me any other administration from any party was ever this insanely corrupt now imagine what else he is doing to the country, selling federal land, got the CIA mucking around in Greenland and who knows where else and he's definitely doing Cuba after November
- wat10000 1mo agoThis is round three. Half the electorate saw round two and said, “more of that, please.” That’s why we’re fucked, not because of the particular idiot they chose.
- SmirkingRevenge 1mo agoHalf of America thinks the only way to solve Republican-caused disasters is to elect more Republicans
- sershe 1mo agoIt's very easy to look up what the govt spends money on. All of these things are rounding errors that make good rage bait. The biggest, and some of the fastest growing, outlays are medicare and social security - money transfers from everyone else to the richest demographic in human history. In case of medicare, also mostly unproductive money transfers. I think these are deeply immoral, but I guess helping grandma doesn't make for good rage bait so it's easy for both parties to get distracted by tiny line items that, fiscally, do not matter - be it DEI, ballrooms or whatever.
- Havoc 1mo agoThey’re just lining up the Xth once in a lifetime crisis for millennials…
- josefritzishere 1mo agoTLDR: yes.
- insane_dreamer 1mo agoTrump will go down in history as causing the most damage to the US, economically, politically, in terms of foreign standing, and possibly even militarily, of any president. Nixon is starting to look like a saint.