The Indicator from Planet Money - Bond market nightmares

Episode Date: May 15, 2025

In early April, the bond market gave people a scare. Investors began selling off their historically secure U.S. Treasuries in large quantities. It reportedly encouraged President Trump to pause his flurry of liberation day tariffs. These jitters offered a glimpse into what could go wrong for U.S. Treasuries if economic uncertainty gets worse. On today's show, we take a peek at some nightmare scenarios for the bond market.Related episodes:Who's advising Trump on trade (Apple / Spotify)IRS information sharing, bonds bust, and a chorebot future (Apple / Spotify)Bond vigilantes. Who they are, what they want, and how you'll know they're coming (Apple / Spotify)Is the reign of the dollar over? (Apple / Spotify)For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

NPR. This is the indicator for Planet Money. I'm Adrienne Ma. And I'm Waylon Wong. The bond market recently gave us a good scare. This is after President Trump's Liberation Day announcement last month. You may remember that there was a sell-off in U.S. government bonds. Yeah, that was alarming because U.S. treasuries are usually this safe haven in times of economic uncertainty.

These bond market jitters reportedly spooked Trump so much that he paused. some of its big tariff plans. And the scariness of what happened with treasuries has actually stayed with us. Like the lingering dread you might feel after watching a horror movie. I'm still sweating, Adrian. So today on the show, we confront our fears about the bond market. We enter a twilight zone of nightmare scenarios for U.S. Treasuries. Come with us, if you dare, after the break.

The U.S. Treasury market is massive. We're talking almost $30 trillion worth of outstanding bonds. That's money the U.S. government has borrowed from investors. And it uses that money, along with tax dollars, to fund everything the government does. Now, most of these bondholders are in the U.S., but investors all around the world are usually clamoring to hold U.S. treasuries. They know historically that the U.S. pays its debts on time. And therefore, investors don't demand a high interest rate from the U.S. government. This is part of what's known as the U.S.'s exorbitant privilege.

Mark Williams is an economist at a firm called Capital Economics. It advises central banks and corporations on investment decisions. And Mark says investors' healthy appetite for treasuries keeps prices for these bonds high and interest rates for government debt low. You really do want there to be a large pool of investors who are happy buying it as it goes the price is going to go down and the interest rate on U.S. government debt is going to go up. So the U.S. government really doesn't want to be in a position where you have much higher interest rates on that debt. Last month, the Treasury market got a taste of what happens when this arrangement breaks down.

Bond prices fell, along with stocks and the dollar. And what that suggests is that rather than people being worried about the outlook and piling into the bond market, which is the normal thing they do, they just have been deciding, you know what, I don't want to have anything to do with U.S. markets at all. I'm looking elsewhere. And so we saw that the currencies of Japan, the euro, all strengthening. That's kind of the scary, slightly unusual bit. So what would happen if the bond market got spooked again, maybe for longer? Now we are entering the twilight zone, a realm of the hypothetical where we confront our worst nightmares about U.S. treasuries.

Picture, if you will, a dim hallway with three doors. each door leads to a scenario for U.S. debt. Behind door number one, what happens when investors do not want U.S. treasuries anymore? There is some scary stuff happening here, okay? The U.S. Treasury is trying to sell new bonds, but no one's showing up to buy them. And there are also investors who already own treasuries who are dumping them. They're running away.

Oh, yeah, a version of this did play out during last month's treasury market freak out. Rumors swirled about whether foreign central banks or governments were doing the selling. We know there have been stories that it was the Japanese were selling, the Canadians, Europeans, the Chinese. Mark doesn't think foreign governments did much selling. This is because central banks typically act slowly. So that leaves private investors like insurance companies or hedge funds as the ones who most likely got spooked. And Mark says investors yanking their money is typically something you see happen to emerging economies, not that. the U.S.

The U.S. is usually the place, actually, you go to when you're worried about the future. It's not the place you flee from. When investors flee treasuries, interest rates on U.S. government debt go up. And that spells trouble for the government. That's according to Me Too Galati. He's a law professor at the University of Virginia and an expert in what happens when governments can't pay their debts anymore. Our debt load, the largest in the world, is in the trillions.

So a tiny increase in our borrowing costs means that if we have a lot of money coming due and we need to borrow again, that money has to come from somewhere. Governments who need money can borrow it by selling bonds. That's usually what the U.S. does. It's like this revolving door where it borrows new money to pay older debts. But in our bond nightmare scenario, investors are running away from treasuries, so there aren't enough buyers for new government bonds. Me Too also points out that the Trump administration is loathe to raise taxes,

and it doesn't want to fuel inflation by printing money. Then you have no new money coming, and that will produce pressure to come up with creative solutions. One such creative solution lies behind door number two. And some investors would probably consider this a new, nightmare scenario. So this idea recently popped up in a paper written by Stephen Myron. He's the current chair of the White House's Council of Economic Advisors, which means he has the president's ear.

Myran wrote this paper in November before he joined the administration. And in it, he proposed a debt swap. He said the U.S. could approach foreign governments who are holding short-term treasuries. These would be bonds that come due in two or three years. He proposed saying to them, you should take your short-term treasuries and exchange them for 100-year bonds that have the payout coming 100 years from them. Oh, so there's no annual coupon payment. You just wait 100 years to get your money back. Yes, and by then, presumably this current government is not going to be in place.

And so that's someone else's problem. Now, this is a very extreme option, something me too. who says would only happen if the treasury market were in shambles. And even proposing a debt swap would be tantamount to the U.S. defaulting. It's basically admitting that the government needs more time to pay back its debts. And what investor would want to take that deal? Well, this hypothetical nightmare actually gets worse. Potentially, if things go belly up yet further, interest rates will rise and we'll be in a situation of having to do this on a slightly involuntary basis. Involuntary, meaning the U.S. government would just say to bondholders,

this is happening whether you like it or not. That two-year bond in your portfolio is now a hundred-year bond. And Me Too says the U.S. government can do this, because as far as he knows, there are no actual contracts for treasuries. They're only regulations, and those can be changed. I don't get a piece of paper with the terms on it? No, and nobody ever asked for a piece of paper. It's just a regulation that, in theory, the U.S. can change whenever it wants.

For now, a U.S. debt exchange is still highly unlikely. So let us turn our attention to door number three. Behind this door are what Me Too describes as more reasonable policy options. for tackling the massive debt load. I think we're still in a safe space. The market has panicked, but it has kind of unpanicked a little bit. The realistic scenario, I think,

would be we would just, A, raise taxes and, B, spend less, and then we could get out of it. We are rich enough to get out of such a situation. Do we have the willingness to raise taxes and tighten our belt, that's an altogether different question. And that's more of a political question. Honestly, raising taxes is some people's worst nightmare.

It's worse than anything else we've described here. I would say the Trump administration's answer to that political question is kind of the opposite to promise tax cuts and increase spending. Well, as we know, there's been massive cuts to the federal government, potentially more to come. But the administration wants to spend significant. significantly more on defense and border security. This episode was produced by Lily Kuros and engineered by Kweezy Lee.

It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Kicking Cannon edits the show and The Indicator is a production of NPR.