The global bond markets are a sensitive lot. And they’ve been having a particularly tricky time lately.

Spooked by high inflation, high interest rates and high levels of government debt across the world, those markets have become less stable over the summer. The prices of government bonds – what governments sell to investors – have gone down. And yields – the amount of interest governments need to pay to those investors over a set period of time – have gone up.

This means it’s now more expensive for governments to borrow the money they need to pay for all the things governments need to pay for.

In the US for example, the interest rate that investors charge the government for a ten-year bond has risen to 5%, its highest level for almost 20 years. Ten-year borrowing costs in the UK and France are also at their highest levels since before the global financial crisis of 2008.

Some analysts blame governments themselves for this rise because of their persistent budget deficits, where spending outstrips tax revenues, forcing them to lean heavily on bond markets to plug the gap.

But budget deficits have been commonplace for years. Neither the UK nor the US has managed to run a........

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