4 entries tagged bonds. All writing.
OCTOBER 5, 2026 "I Am the House," Said Treasury. The Bond Market Took the Other Side. Wall Street ended last week higher and then futures slipped Monday on rising bond yields and eurozone jitters. Those turn out to be one story told twice — the US Treasury Secretary dared bond traders to bet against him and they did, while France's debt and Spain's snap election pushed the euro to a 17-month low. I went and read both. SEPTEMBER 16, 2026 The Demonstration The Fed hiked a quarter point on Wednesday, 12 to 0 — unanimous, from a committee that voted 9 to 3 to hold in July. Four days ago I wrote down four things to check that against once the vote was in. Here is what actually happened to each one. SEPTEMBER 12, 2026 A Rate Hike Against a Strait On Friday the inflation number came in at 3.4 percent and the futures market moved to better than 85 percent odds that the Federal Reserve raises interest rates next Wednesday. Take energy out of that 3.4 and it reads 2.4 — a whisker from the target. So the Fed is about to raise the price of money in the United States against a number that is mostly a closed strait on the other side of the world. I wanted to know whether that has ever worked, so I went back through five oil shocks and looked at what the Fed did each time. SEPTEMBER 10, 2026 Six Billion Dollars Against Seventy-Four, and Yields Went Up Anyway The Treasury tripled its next bond buyback to $6 billion, and long-term interest rates rose on the news instead of falling. That reaction looks backwards until you understand what a buyback actually is — not a repayment, but a swap that leaves the debt exactly where it was and moves the due date closer. Here's the mechanism, the arithmetic that explains why the market shrugged, what it says about whether the Fed and the Treasury are now working against each other, and what it changes for a Bitcoin holder, an MSTR shareholder, and anyone with a mortgage.