Like moths drawn to a flame, this moron has 1.2 million followers

 

I have a hard time getting excited about bond yields surging 7% in the wake of the Iran war when they already surged 368% since 2020 to the end of February

100 days of the Iran war: How global markets and the economy have been affected, in charts

 ... Yields on U.S. Treasurys are among those to have surged in the aftermath of the war ... U.S. 30-year Treasury yields have surged ...

 

 

Everything sold off today

Stocks were down across the board, with the NASD 100 notably down 4.77%. The equal weight S&P 500 is down 0.52% month to date.

The Tech sector was down the most on the day, 5.78%.

The Consumer Staples sector was up the most on the day, 1.64%, which looks defensive against a possible coming recession. The Utilities sector was up half that.

The U.S. 10Y yield rose to 4.55%, and the 20Y and 30Y yields rose above 5.00. YTD return for VUSUX is now down 0.85%.

Oil retreated 3%.

Metals were down across the board, silver down over 8%.

Crypto was down across the board, too, with Bitcoin falling below $60k.

But DXY climbed! +0.658 to 100.071.

The theory is investors are upset that today's "strong" jobs numbers (the 70k hospitality hires is probably World Cup related, a one off, so forget that) indicate easy money from the Fed is now absolutely out of the question, and maybe even a rate increase is coming because the economy is running too hot, which is silly with 1Q GDP at 1.6% annualized. CNBC called that "solid" lol.

Jokers say everyone's just raising cash to buy overpriced SpaceX in its IPO next week.

Investors are taking profits ahead of SpaceX IPO, says Capital Wealth’s Kevin Simpson

SpaceX is worth less than half of its $1.75 trillion IPO target, Morningstar says

Daleep Singh: I personally don’t think the bond-vigilante trade will be alive very long

 

 The bond market is flashing a warning over Iran. A veteran of energy geopolitics explains the risk

... A deal would have to be guaranteed by a trusted third party. There’s no trust at all between the U.S. and Tehran right now, because the bombs have been dropping every time they’ve sat down to negotiate. That’s where China comes in, and I’ll be interested to hear more details of what was said and agreed in Beijing [during Trump’s summit with Xi Jinping]. ...

You have got to be kidding me. 

China is the primary beneficiary of the world's sanctioned oil.

 

 

Kevin Warsh wasn't sworn in as Fed chair on Friday and Powell is still in charge because Warsh has so many assets to unload to meet ethics requirements he couldn't get 'em all done on time lol

 So the bond vigilantes threw a party and sold off, spiking yields across the board 1.44% on the day, throwing down the gauntlet at Warsh, daring him to cut in the face of all the chaos Trump is causing.

The 20-year soared to 5.14%.

Yields are up 2.8% in the aggregate since the beginning of the month.

6% inflation is knocking on the door.

Inflation rate projected to hit 6% in the second quarter, top economic forecasters say

 

 

 

Hey, when does Starmer resign anyway?

Starmer Has Failed Abjectly. He Should Go

The Economist

 ... Britain’s government bonds have the highest yields in the G7. ...

 

The US bond market is pissed off at everybody this morning

 Yippee ki yay you muthas.

US economic growth peaked during the Reagan administration because America is a debt-based economy and we turned our backs on the formula during it

 The trend for the growth of the total universe of US debt, TCMDO or total credit market debt outstanding, rolled over after 1985, one year after GDP did.

TCMDO is the real money, almost $108 trillion at the end of 2025. In 1985 it was $9 trillion.

M2 was merely $22 trillion at the end of 2025. 

TCMDO is the sum total of debt expansion throughout the sectors of the economy.

Historically, most people have experienced it this way.

You get a full time job, which itself was created by a business selling debt in the form of stocks and bonds in order to expand its operations and future profits, and you go buy a house, putting down $100k on a $500k property. The bank loans you the $400k through fractional reserve lending on a small portion of its reserves but secured by the house. That new money is created out of thin air but is actually represented by the "guaranteed" future income stream of your job for 30 years, because you're a smart, reliable guy who never misses a day of work. TCMDO expands, and expands some more each time this happens.

When the conditions disappear for full time job creation, the process slows down. You can see the decline in the growth of the economy in the decline of the growth of the debt. Yes, everything is still growing, but not as vigorously.

Full time as a percent of population peaked 26 years ago, in 2000, at 53.55%, but retested the 1975 low of 46.74% in 2010 and 2011 at 46.97%, back-to-back years in the Late Great Recession.

Housing strength persisted in the immediate post-Reagan period on the illusory basis of windfalls from massive ordinary income tax cuts combined with the demographic peaking of the 1957 Baby Boom turning 40 in 1997 driving demand, but the hollowing out of the economy had already begun with the move of 20,000 manufacturers abroad after the 1986 tax reform.

Early warning signs began flashing already during the Clinton era.

Clinton immediately raised taxes in 1993 after he promised not to raise them in 1992, began a long series of cuts to federal government employment, and gutted the US Navy.

Americans were already struggling at the time and ominously tapped housing equity to sustain their middle class standard of living. Owners' Equity in Real Estate averaged 70% 1982-1986 inclusive, but plunged ten points within a decade to 60% 1996-1999 inclusive.

Homes had become piggy banks, preparing the way for 1997, the year Clinton and the Republicans went further still and turned homes into mere commodities, which in turn prepared the way for the housing catastrophe of 2008. From 1997 a flood of 70,000 more manufacturers began moving out as globalization kicked into high gear and China gained admission to the WTO in 2001.

Almost no one today wants to say out loud how unpatriotic this whole business was. 

Reagan tried to convince us that we know best what to do with our own money, and we promptly turned around and staked our fortunes on foreign investment, not domestic.

Libertarianism is a lie.  

Today you will be hard-pressed to identify a major manufacturing concern with 100% of its operations in the US. Tesla is a standout (heavily subsidized by the federal government!), but other than that most of the businesses which remain patriotically committed to the American idea are pretty small beer compared with how it used to be. 

The formerly domestic debt expansion was exported abroad, creating middle classes where none existed before, especially in East Asia, and doing so cost businesses A LOT less, the key attraction for them.

As a result, enormous profits accrued to the owners of capital while wage earners here struggled to maintain the American dream. Wealth inequality soared, and now our children are 40 before they buy their first home.   

TCMDO grew at a compound annual rate of 8.355% 1945-1985, but at only 6.398% 1985-2025. The change from optimism to pessimism can be traced in the trend lines.

Continued growth of TCMDO at the former rate but after 1985 would have yielded TCMDO at the end of 2025 of $223 trillion, or 106% more "money" than we actually have.

$115 trillion is "missing", or at least something like that. We will never know for sure, but some of us can still imagine because we watched the great betrayal actually happen.

This is why I say socialism is the future, not because I want it or because I think it will work.

People are going to figure this out eventually, get angry, and do the wrong thing, just like we did during the Reagan administration. 

 

 

As an inflation fighter, Jerome Powell turned out to be twice as bad as Arthur Burns

Under Powell core pce inflation exceeded 10Y yield for 4 consecutive years (2020-2023).

Under Burns it was for only 2 (1974-1975).

The Bernank was Fed chair in 2012 when inflation only just barely outran 10Y yield.

 

Why the world has the petrodollar, not a petroyuan

Don’t call time on dollar dominance just yet, say analysts as ‘petroyuan’ call sparks debate 

... “Oil is not priced in US dollars simply because the United States has long acted as the world’s policeman,” wrote Sonal Desai, Franklin Templeton’s fixed income CIO.  

“Oil exporters have a strong self-interest in getting paid in USD, because of what dollars represent: access to the deepest, most liquid capital markets in the world, backed by an institutional and legal framework that protects property rights and enforces contracts, supported by a strong, dynamic, and innovative economy.” ...

Franklin Templeton’s Desai added in the note that building the right infrastructure for a credible replacement, consisting of “deep markets, rule of law, full convertibility, a track record of macro stability”, takes decades, not years. ...

Desai added that the dollar’s recent weakness is simply a function of its characteristics. 

“Some dollar softness is perfectly consistent with global reserve currency status,” Desai wrote. 

“Unlike the renminbi, the dollar is a freely floating currency. It floats – up and down.”

 

 

Bond yields through March 2026 have ignored Fed interest rate cuts which commenced in September 2024

 

Drudge is running propaganda for the Chicom bond market now

 

Chinese govt bonds emerge as lone haven...

 

https://en.people.cn/n3/2026/0327/c90000-20440521.html

... "By allocating to RMB bonds, foreign investors can reduce portfolio volatility and improve risk-adjusted returns." ... "In the face of frequent geopolitical risks, the safe-haven role of RMB bonds has emerged," Yu said, adding that as the RMB internationalization progresses, demand for RMB assets as reserves is growing, and this is expected to support the growth of RMB bonds holdings by central banks and sovereign wealth funds.                                                                                        

LOL, what a crock.

Foreign investors own less than $1 trillion of Chinese debt, compared with over $9 trillion of U.S. debt.

... [U.S.] Treasuries are relied upon by global central banks as the pre-eminent reserve asset, since the $30tn market for the securities is the biggest and deepest in the world. ...

More. 

 

Some foreign holders of U.S. Treasury securities are selling them to buy oil, which is denominated in DOLLARS, not in yuan

 Thank you for your attention to this matter.

DXY: 99.893 

Foreign central banks sell US Treasuries in wake of Iran war

 

Reality has a funny way of jamming seemingly interminable rosy expectations

 Markets now see the Fed’s next move as a potential rate hike as inflation fears mount

... Traders in the futures market pushed the probability of a rate increase by the end of 2026 to 52% on Friday morning, the first time it has crossed the 50% threshold, according to the CME Group FedWatch tool. ... 

 

U.S. Treasury yields are ringing the alarm at Mad King Ludwig

 

Iranian parliament Speaker threatens to target U.S. financial institutions on Sunday, Trump chickens out by breakfast Monday

 Iran threatens U.S. Treasury buyers as Trump’s 48-hour ultimatum looms

Published Mon, Mar 23 2026 12:28 AM EDT 

... In a social media post on Sunday, Iran’s Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said that U.S.-linked financial institutions holding American government bonds would be targeted alongside military bases.

“U.S. treasury bonds are soaked in Iranians’ blood. Purchase them, and you purchase a strike on your HQ and assets,” Ghalibaf said. “Alongside military bases, those financial entities that finance the U.S. military budget are legitimate targets,” he added in the post. ...

How come this isn't the end of Starmer's government when it was the end of Truss'?

 

Trump thinks high interest rates are all Powell's fault when they are HIS: The war in Iran, the tariffs, the addition of $2 trillion in debt in seven months

 

Gold and silver are on sale today lol

 Gold and silver sell-off accelerates as inflation fears grip global markets

... fears about the Iran war and inflation gripped global markets ... 

... The moves in gold and silver come amid broader risk-off sentiment, which has seen global equities and government bonds fall in tandem. ... 

CNBC doesn't mention that the dollar rallied in the last month along with bonds and gold

 Gold heads for seventh straight monthly gain on safe-haven demand

... The metal has climbed 6.5% so ⁠far in February, bringing gains for the seven months to a whopping 58%. ... The benchmark 10-year yield fell to a three-month low ‌on the day, decreasing the opportunity cost of holding non-interest-paying gold. ...