Freak sell-off of ‘safe haven’ US bonds raises fear that confidence in America is fading
Freak sell-off of ‘safe haven’ US bonds raises fear that confidence in America is fading
The upheaval in stocks has been grabbing all the headlines, but there is a bigger problem looming in another corner of the financial markets that rarely gets headlines: Investors are dumping U.S. government bonds.
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.
raises fear that confidence in America is fading
Just now that fear is being raised?
Shoots market in the dick
“Don’t worry folks, all part of the plan”
Puts bandages on market
“There, good as new”
USD denominated bonds are by definition 100% exposed to the USD and it has been falling consistently (with but a single dead cat bounce) against other major currencies since Trump took over.
International investors are probably avoiding the Dollar (and hence Dollar-denominated assets) in favor of other currencies.
This would also explain why Gold keeps on beating records almost daily: it's sort of a "traditional" currency hence benefits from outflows from major currencies.
If this turns into the end of the Reserve Currency status for the USD, expect massive problems in the US with Inflation and servicing the massive US National Debt (if Treasury auctions have lower demand, Treasure yields have to go up in order to sell them, which is equivalent to say that interest rates on US Government loans go up).
When US policy can change in hours, based on the whims of a madman, it’s not exactly difficult to see why people lose faith in that stability. Investors want long term stability, and right now things are complete chaos.
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).
I know that my quality of life is likely to tank in the coming years, and if it doesn't it is because I got lucky where others didn't, but damn is it hilarious seeing how fucking stupid centrist business bros and tech people are in the U.S. right now, they are JUST NOW realizing the boat is sinking, when only half of the boat is still above the water..... it is fucking hilarious honestly and I don't take joy in this happening, I mean I do, but I am not happy it is happening I am rather so sad that if I don't laugh about it all I will do is cry.
If ya'll want another layer of irony to all this:
George Soros initially rose to general public fame/infamy with large bets against British Pound in 1992, that effectively defeated the Bank of England's attempts to stabilize the currency, resulting in its devaluation, and something like a billion $ profit for Soros.
Fast forward to now, and Trump supporters have spent the last 5 or 10 years acting like Soros is secretly the most underhanded and influential 'world controller' bogey man that exists, and they blame everything they don't like on being funded by him... despite pretty much all of his charities and funds and causes he donates to being publically available knowledge... and despite Soros being a fairly small fish in the modern ocean of much, much more wealthy and infuential corporations and individuals.
... So, now, Trump very well may have done basically the same thing as what Soros did 3 decades ago: force the devaluation of the USD and cause economic mayhem, but... at a much, much larger scale than Soros did.
The Trump supporters have utterly and entirely lost their own plot, that they themselves mostly fabricated.
There’s a reason for that. Maybe if all those well-off bankers hadn’t thrown in with trump in hopes of deregulation their portfolios would still be slowly climbing up with the DJIA under a democrat instead of flopping around like a fish out of water under trump.
I mean they voted for a criminal. So yeah.
"The fear is the U.S. is loosing its standing as the safe heaven" ? Looking at it from the E.U., it's already gone with no going back. The U.S. looks more and more like a self destructing failed state, that only needed a little nudge from foreign troll factories.
As a guy who thought about buying bonds recently and decided to go to gold instead, my thinking was that Trump and/or Elon could definitely make some attempt to steal/divert treasury bonds, hold bonds hostage for some change he wants, or some other fuckery. The US can't go bankrupt - so long as you can trust the leaders to do the most basic rational things. But you can't trust them to do that right now.
I sold 98% of mine.
now I'm diversified across Europe and Asia.
not great, but what choice do I have?
Google searches for stable foreign bonds skyrockets
Well I mean... Gestures at everything
Can't believe the president who has repeatedly floated the idea of defaulting on government debt to save money would provoke this response.
There's a story floating around that Canada's PM, Mark Carney, may have initiated this threat so that Trump would back off on his tariff escalation.
maybe you shouldnt have backed trump in his eleciton.
Y'all need to actually read the article instead of just using it to prove what you already believe. The world is more complicated than a headline
Art of the Deal, ladies and gentlemen! You just don’t understand!
Fuck these headlines